Zero Hour
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Ninth in the "Brutus" series, follows up "After the Rain". Hannibal and Murdock's fiancee have been kidnapped by an old enemy, and time is running out. Now the rest of the Team has to find out what is going on, who all is involved, and how to find their leader before it's too late.
1. Chapter 1

Zero Hour

Author's note: I'm going to try about making this the last story in the series, but seeing as how I've been trying to do it for 7 previous stories now, I'm not sure how good of luck I'll have with it. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is the last post-"Brutus" hurrah for the A-Team. A word of warning, this story is going to be a bit darker than previous others. Hope you enjoy.

Face rubbed one eye and said, more to himself than anyone else, "Okay, so let's try this again: we have General Stockwell, we _also_ have General Fulbright – the Terror of Toledo, and we also have our old friend, Dimitri Pedavich, Russian butcher of the century…how do they all tie together? What did they all come together for?"

18 hours. It was now 18 hours since Hannibal Smith had been kidnapped, Hannibal _and_ Murdock's fiancée, Jean Rhodes. 18 long, slow, dragging hours, 18 lifetimes, 18 eternities, _no_ answers, no leads, nothing that they could go on to figure out what was going on, or where their Colonel had been taken last night.

Murdock sat in a chair across from Face and looked at him with tired, blank eyes that hadn't slept and had hardly even blinked in the last 18 hours. If he was actually listening to Face, who could tell?

The two men could hear B.A.'s heavy boots stomping around the house as the Sergeant restlessly paced from room to room, pausing only to look out the windows one at a time before moving on. This sudden turn of events had taken them all by surprise and they hadn't yet figured out how they were going to solve the problem. Initially after the abduction, when Face revealed to Murdock and B.A. who they were going up against again, they'd tried to get back on the trail of Hannibal's captors but by that time the getaway truck had been long gone. The tracks its tires had made had only gone so far before the torrential downpours and the asphalt of a paved street caused them to run out suddenly. They'd tried getting on the right trail again but after a while found they were only going around in circles, so they decided to double back to the house so they could figure out what they had to do now; and so far they were coming up empty.

"Okay," Face tried again, "So Stockwell was supposed to be at that airport last night to meet _with_ Pedavich…why? How could these two possibly come together? Granted they have in common that they're the biggest scums of the earth, but still…and _why_ Fulbright? _Why_ was he there? Could he _possibly_ be working _with_ the two of them? If so, what's his gain in all this?"

Murdock finally blinked his eyes and kept them shut for a few seconds before finally forcing them open again.

"It all goes back to Stockwell," Murdock said.

Face looked at the pilot to see what he would say next, if Murdock was starting to brainstorm, it just might tornado. Murdock looked at Face with a now haunting expression on his face and said, "Jean tried to figure out what hospital he was taken to…"

"She never found out," Face assured him.

"He wasn't there at the airport last night," Murdock said, "Is he still _in_ the hospital?"

Face shrugged and said, "Only one way to find out…_we_ know where he was taken."

Murdock got up at the same time Face did, but Face reached over and pushed Murdock back in the chair and told him, "No Murdock, I better go this one alone, if Stockwell's there, or if he's conscious, you're the one he's after so you need to stay out of sight."

"But Faceman, _I'm_ the only one here _not_ a wanted fugitive," Murdock told him.

"Murdock, I'll be fine," Face assured him as he picked up his MP clothes, "I can work any scam a hundred ways, you know that."

Murdock got up and went over to the Lieutenant and just stared at him for a minute; Face stopped what he was doing and stared back at the Captain to see what happened next. No words were exchanged, and then finally Murdock leaned over, kissed Face on the forehead and told him in one of his more somber voices, "Godspeed, my friend," and then Murdock retreated from the living room and disappeared upstairs.

Face didn't really get what that was about, but didn't let it slow him down. B.A. came into the living room just in time to see Face finish getting into uniform.

"Where're you going, Face?" he asked suspiciously.

"Going to the hospital to make sure Stockwell didn't do a disappearing act in the middle of the night," he answered as he picked up his helmet but carried it in the crook of his arm, "See I've got this idea, B.A. I go to the hospital dressed as an MP, and I ask the nurse if any other MPs have come to see the General. And I convince her that the real MPs are fake MPs and make her believe I'm a _real_ MP and tell her if any other MPs to show up to call me first and stall them from seeing Stockwell, you see?"

"No," B.A. answered firmly, "But good luck and _don't_ get caught."

Face nodded and headed for the door. A few seconds after B.A. heard the car leave, he heard a noise from upstairs that sounded like something or someone hitting the floor.

"Murdock?" he called, and there was no response from the second floor, so B.A. took the stairs two at a time to see what was going on.

He found Murdock mostly sprawled on the floor, only slightly leaning against a dresser, banging one hand against the wood paneling on it as he cried out in anguish and fury. At his feet lay Jean's Captain Midnight decoder ring with the tracking device in it. B.A. knew what was going through Murdock's mind, if _only_. As it was they were left with absolutely no idea where Hannibal and Jean had been taken or even where to start looking for them. B.A. knelt down, grabbed Murdock under his arms and pulled the pilot to his feet, and he didn't know whether to be relieved or worried that Murdock didn't even try to fight him.

"What're we gonna do, Big Guy?" Murdock asked him, "What if we don't find them in time?"

"Hey Murdock, now's no time for your crazy talk," B.A. told him gruffly, "This ain't the first jam we been in without Hannibal, it ain't gonna be the last either, get that through your head," and he tapped Murdock on the side of his head, which might as well have been a well placed strike as strong as he was.

Murdock pulled himself together long enough to say to the Sergeant, "Hannibal's gone, I gotta figure out how we're gonna get him back now…I gotta…I gotta come up with…" but he couldn't finish the thought before collapsing against B.A. and burying his face in the larger man's shoulder as he started to sob uncontrollably. B.A. let him stay there for a few minutes until Murdock could compose himself, and in the meantime he maintained a neutral front for the pilot's sake, but he knew exactly what was racing through Murdock's mind, it wasn't anything he hadn't thought the exact same of about a thousand times since last night. _Where_ had they taken Hannibal?

* * *

Hannibal tried to move slightly without waking the woman who had fallen asleep leaning on his shoulder. He'd had a good long time to get to know their surroundings, which currently was merely a single room, perhaps 30 feet by 20, with absolutely _nothing_ in it, except the two of them.

Over the night, he'd tried to explain to Jean just how bad they could expect things to be now at the hands of Dimitri Pedavich. Out of all the bad guys the A-Team had gone up against, he had been among the worst, not merely because he was pure unconcentrated evil, but because he was _smart_ as well. And this was just further proof, the man had been smart enough, unlike many of their captors over the years, to throw them in a completely empty room _not_ filled with a bunch of odds and ends that could be put together to make a way out for them.

He felt Jean move against him and noticed she was starting to stir. No use putting off the bad news he supposed.

Jean yawned and rubbed her eyes and, remembering where they were, asked Hannibal, "How long have we been here?"

"About 12 hours I think," he answered.

Jean groaned and asked him, "Why didn't you wake me up?"

Hannibal explained simply, "We have no food or water, we have to save what strength we have."

Jean pulled away from him and ran her sandpaper tongue over the dry roof of her mouth and she asked Hannibal, "When're they coming for us?"

"Sorry to break it to you kid," Hannibal told her, "But part of how this guy works is he likes to leave his victims locked up for a couple _days_ without food or water. He likes a challenge on occasion, that challenge being when people try to fight back on pure adrenaline and self will alone, unfortunately it's usually not enough with the way he plays…but we're gonna have to try."

Jean scratched the side of her face and asked Hannibal, "Can they hear us out there?"

Hannibal shook his head, "Doesn't matter, they won't come in until they know we're too weak to do anything."

She looked at him and asked, "Do you know where they brought us?"

Hannibal shook his head again, "I suspect half of the time we spent in the back of that truck was them driving around in circles just to throw us off, and it probably worked. Then we were blindfolded before we even got off the truck, all the way into _this_ room. I told you before, this guy's actually competent, he knows what he's doing, that's what makes this hard."

Jean looked down at the floor and tried to think, she told Hannibal, "I remember stepping over the threshold to get in the front door…"

"If it _was_ the front door," Hannibal told her.

"I remember crossing over three other raised thresholds before we came to this room…" she looked at him mournfully and added, "But I've never been good at judging distances, especially when I can't see them."

"It's alright," he said, "It wouldn't help us anyway."

"Do you remember anything?" Jean asked as she crawled over to him.

He shook his head, "They're smart, nobody talked, there were no noises in the background…"

"And people say the Japanese are the smart ones," Jean sneered.

Hannibal looked at her, and felt sorry for what he knew they had to look forward to.

"It's going to be a long wait, kid," he told her, "Why don't you just rest?"

A small laugh escaped through her lips, a laugh that didn't sound like Jean at all, not even when she acted like a maniac, though it did sound like something from that neighborhood.

"Go to sleep?" she asked bitterly, "So it won't hurt when they _shoot_ us?" She shook her head, "No thanks, when our time comes, I _will_ stand."

_If only it was that simple, kid,_ he thought to himself, _I wish it were_.

"Come here," Hannibal put an arm around her and pulled her closer to him, "You would've been a good soldier, kid."

Jean didn't say anything in response, but he could feel her shaking her head against his shoulder.

"Listen, Jean," Hannibal said, his voice firm but low, "There's something that I need to say to you and you probably don't want to hear it but…"

"Let me guess," she picked her head up and looked at him, "Uh, 'Accept that we could die right here, anything else is just very good luck, figure you're dead', is that it?"

Hannibal couldn't stop a small chuckle from escaping, "You've heard that speech before, huh?"

"A couple times," Jean answered as she leaned against his shoulder again.

"I see," he replied as he rubbed her back slowly.

"Hannibal," she waited until he looked at her before she said, "We _are_ going to die, aren't we?"

Hannibal paused briefly before telling her, "_Any_ job my men and I take, there's _always_ the chance that some…"

"Don't give me that," Jean cut him off, "Don't give me maybes and what if's, I'm not talking about that and I'm not interested in your hypotheticals, you and I _are_ going to die here, aren't we?"

He was silent for a few seconds as if he was flabbergasted by her sudden outburst, and then he calmly told her, "Yeah, I think we are. Can you accept that?"

Jean nodded, "I've accepted death long before now. You know what it's like to be locked in a Cong sweatbox all day, but _do you know_ what it's like being locked in a walk-in freezer until the temperature's below zero? Do you know what it's like to get caught in a car bomb and come out on _fire_?"

Hannibal gave a small smile and said to her, "You're a survivor kid, a fighter, just like us."

He could feel her shake her head again, "No, I'm nothing like any of you, I never was. I tried to be…I failed."

"Little early for last regrets, isn't it?" he asked, hoping it would get some kind of response out of her. "Hey maybe you can explain something to me, kid…Pedavich's men thought that they nabbed up Face last night, exactly _how_ did they get _you_ instead?"

Jean looked down at the floor and explained, "Face tripped coming back, I heard someone coming, I kicked him down the hill and a few seconds later they grabbed me, I offered no resistance so they wouldn't get curious and look around."

"You _let_ them think you were Face, _why_?" Hannibal asked her.

She looked up towards him and said uncertainly, "I had a bad feeling about what was going to happen last night…seems I was right. Would Murdock have been any better off with both you _and_ Face dead? Or just you and me instead?" She made eye contact with the Colonel and explained, "You see this way if we don't come back, he still has two of his best friends with him, he would be _better_ off than if only one survived."

Hannibal was left speechless momentarily by her comment. When he was able to speak again, he said to her, "You're very brave, kid."

She shook her head, "I had it right the first time, I'm a coward. Accepting death _doesn't_ mean you stop being afraid of it." She looked up towards the ceiling and asked Hannibal, "What do you suppose it's like? In the minute that it happens…what…"

Hannibal tightened his hold on her and told her, "Don't think about it."

"How can I not?" Jean asked. She looked up again and added, "I haven't killed anybody since you first found me. You'd think that would count for something but it doesn't, because _thinking_ about something makes you just as guilty as if you'd actually done it. And since there have been and still are so many people in this world I want dead, I guess I know where I'm doomed to end up."

"Is a soldier damned merely because he killed? Do the reasons matter why?" Hannibal asked in his usual mind-twisting rhetoric. "It's more complex than that, and simultaneously, much simpler than we're willing to give credit to."

"Oh well," Jean sighed, "At least once it's over, I should be able to ask someone up there if my life was all in vain or not."

"God doesn't create lives without a purpose," Hannibal told her.

She looked at him and explained, "I _meant_ my uncle…even before he died it had been a good long while since I last saw him or talked to him. But we were so much alike and we understood each other so well, maybe he can explain what all this has been for. You'll think it's weird, but I would've sworn I could feel his presence with me last night when we went out."

"Probably was," he said.

A moment of silence passed between them before Hannibal looked at Jean and said to her, "Listen, Jean, if we _are_ going to die, and I think it's a safe bet that we _are_, there's something I want to tell you."

"What?" she asked uncertainly.

"I've enjoyed having you as a member of this family," he told her, "It's been a pleasure having the chance to watch you grow up over the last couple years, and it's been fun having the opportunity to see Murdock have someone else in his life, someone who was able and willing to take the job full-time," he held her close in an awkward hug and said, "Thanks for the privilege."

Jean tried to smile but her eyes were beginning to cloud up with tears, still she maintained a small smile and tried to sound nonchalant as she said to Hannibal, "You'll excuse me…I seem to be doing more crying in the last few weeks than I ever did in my whole life."

He smiled back in response and said, "Nothing wrong with that, kid."

Jean's face pressed between his shoulder and the crook of his neck again, for the first few seconds she was stiff as a board, Hannibal couldn't even hear her breathing. Then, after a little while more, he could feel her whole body trembling against him as she broke down sobbing. He patted her back sympathetically and said softly, "It's okay, kid…it's okay."

* * *

Face removed his MP helmet and tossed it like a football, not even bothering to see where it landed. He walked over to B.A. who was in the process of either loading up or unloading the van and explained, "Stockwell hasn't gone anywhere, he's still blissfully unconscious in that hospital, I think the skull fracture took."

"You sure he ain't faking?" B.A. asked, a loud note of skepticism in his voice.

"B.A., this guy has almost no brain wave activity coming up on the monitors," Face told him, "And besides, just to make sure, I lit a match against his foot until I singed one of his toenails." He shook his head, "If that guy's faking, he's the best there is." He eyed the contents from the van and asked, "Eh, what's going on?"

"Murdock says he' got an idea how to find Hannibal," B.A. said.

"What is it?" Face asked curiously.

Murdock came out the front door and as if he'd been listening to the conversation, said to Face, "It occurred to me that the plant at the Federal Building wasn't for Stockwell, it was for Pedavich. The men who ambushed us last night, who took Hannibal and Jean, they were all dressed _as_ MPs. Now, Stockwell was supposed to meet Pedavich last night, which we've deduced means that somehow these two men put their massive differences aside to join forces and work together for the purpose of catching us, the A-Team."

"Stockwell wants you, Pedavich wants Hannibal," Face realized.

"And where does that leave us?" B.A. asked.

"That," Murdock said, "Is a very good question, Big Guy, unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out the answer just yet. But! The point is for these two to work together, they _have_ to have a go-between who can get in contact with both sides at any given time."

"What about Decker?" Face asked, "We haven't seen him since last night."

"No but…" Murdock gave a mischievous smirk as he deepened his voice and said, "General Bullen of the United States Army", though it sounded like his impersonation of Henry Kissinger, and then resumed his normal voice, "Called Colonel Decker this afternoon to find out what he knows about last night. Officially he is as stumped as we are."

"And unofficially?" Face asked.

"Unofficially he knew I was calling but we're taking no chances that the line may be tapped," Murdock said, "The unasked question was if there was something leading to a higher power, General Bullen in question himself, that could tie it all in? How far does this corruption within the military run? There _are_ already two U.S. Generals involved in this, why not three? Decker mentioned without explicitly saying anything, that Jean had mentioned having friends in high places who kept an eye on the General and all he oversaw."

"Not us," Face said, "We don't know anything about him."

"Correct, Faceman, _we_ don't, but I think I know who does," Murdock said, "Who're the only other friends Jean has beside us?"

"The stuntmen from the film studio," Face said.

"That is correct but you will recall she is not particularly close to Jason Crowley or Peter Kellerman, which leaves…"

"Tommy Trang," Face said, "And probably his five brothers and sister as well."

"And you go to the head of the class, oh Facial One," Murdock said, "And if he's not our man I suspect we'll find the correct one somewhere in the same bloodline. After all it bears stressing that during our absences, Jean enlisted the help of the Trangs to infiltrate the Federal Building under the guise of workers; allowing them to move about undetected and perhaps to gain insight to far more of the personnel there, and their goings-on, than we know of. So I believe we need to go pay the Trang Seven a visit immediately, they've already been informed that we're coming."

* * *

"This guy Pedavich must be pretty good at who he hires," V.C. Trang told the A-Team when they came to visit, "He gets a bunch of Russians who come to America, they lose their accents, they speak English, they act American, they all get jobs as MPs so we don't know we're supposed to be looking for them. How long in advance could this have been planned?"

"A guy like Pedavich," Face said, "Time's not a priority to him, only vengeance, he could've had this planned since we got him put in prison six years ago, _my_ question is _how_ he got out?"

"Because European criminals can't bribe their way out, right?" Tommy Trang asked, "Did this guy have diplomatic immunity or something?"

"He has _universal_ immunity," Face said, "He's responsible for murders committed in Russia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Ukraine, nobody ever touched him until we came along, they _should_ have lined this guy against the wall and used a firing squad."

"Yeah, but they're so much more civilized than America with capital punishment, therefore they let him live so he can break out or find a way to get out, and start butchering people all over again," V.C. said, "And do it on a global basis."

"We're wasting time," Face told the others, "We need to figure out where these guys _went_ so we can figure out where Hannibal is."

Murdock turned to V.C. and said, "You guys would be at the building after hours, did you ever see the MPs leave for the night? Maybe see where they went? Maybe you heard something?"

"I'm sorry, Murdock," she replied, "We weren't there to notice them, we were there checking for bugs in the phone, looking through records, paperwork…"

"And you're sure that this General Bullen isn't involved?" Face asked.

"No-no-no," V.C. shook her head, "I clean his house every week, I hear everything that goes on, he's really _not_ interested in catching the A-Team either, like Decker he's only putting on a public display of interest in the matter due to political pressure."

"How did you manage to pull that off?" B.A. asked.

"His wife doesn't do a lot of background work on her domestic help," V.C. said, "Ignorance can be bliss for both sides sometimes."

"So we're back to square one, Stockwell and Fulbright, and how do they tie together?" Face asked.

"And how does Stockwell tie to Pedavich?" Murdock asked.

"This guy came in on a private jet, where did all of his accomplices come in from?" Stephen Trang asked.

"I don't know," Face said, "Another private jet I suppose?"

"At the same airport?" he asked.

"What _about_ the airport?" V.C. asked, "Did you try following the tire tracks from the armored truck?"

"Rain wiped part of them out, and the other part we followed until they ran out when the paved roads started up again," Face said, "But after that, there are about a hundred different possibilities as to where that truck could've gone, where it could've turned off, where it might've gone to, where it could've been stashed or abandoned or set on fire. We checked as many as we could with the limitations we have, we couldn't find anything."

"So what?" Tommy asked, already heading towards the door, "What difference does that make? We have the resources, let's exhaust them all."

"He's right," V.C. said, "Now that the rain's stopped we can get a chopper and check by air."

"You know how to fly?" Face asked in disbelief.

"No, but he does," V.C. pointed to Murdock, "He was your pilot, right?"

"That's what they all say," Murdock said.

"Alright," V.C. said to Face, "You're the con man, so con a helicopter, he'll check by air, B.A. can go in his van, _you_ check in your corvette, we'll split up and cover the rest, and we'll stay in touch through our radios."

"When did we keep in radio contact with you?" Face asked.

"You didn't," V.C. told him, "We kept in contact with each other back when we were hitting the grocery trucks, remember?"

"Never mind that," B.A. said, "We gotta get moving 'fore Hannibal runs out of time."

"He's nearing 24 hours without any food or water if we know our butcher friend," Face said, "Now he survived Ho Chi Minh's death camp so that's not going to be _too_ bad for him, but…"

"But deprivation for the purpose of disorienting is only a small part of what's in store for both he and Jean," Murdock said, "We gotta move, now!"


	2. Chapter 2

How long now since they'd been locked in this room? 14 hours? It would be too much to hope for 16, time certainly did drag when you weren't going anywhere. Hannibal sat in the middle of the room and tried to think. Jean was over by the wall and he could hear her clearing her throat, or trying to anyway. She'd picked up the _worst_ cough he'd ever heard. Worse than smoker's cough, it sounded like she was being ripped apart from the inside, and truth be told, probably felt the same as well. What it felt like, she'd explained to him, was a sudden rush of acid jumping clear up her throat from her chest, choking her to the point, if she'd had anything in her, she was sure she'd throw up. It was the worst case of heartburn he'd ever heard of and he knew they were in for quite a bit of it because they didn't have anything to treat it. It came and went but the gaps between were never long enough, it always came back after a while.

"Hannibal," she said in a low, almost congested voice.

"Yeah?" he asked.

She turned to see him and crawled over towards him and said as she dropped on the floor beside him, "I'm sorry."

He tiredly nodded his head and replied, "That's alright, just don't do it again…" then he turned to look at her and asked, "Do what again?"

"I know that I've caused a lot of trouble for you guys over the years," she said.

Hannibal managed a weak chuckle and said, "Trouble's our specialty, you didn't give us anything we couldn't handle."

Jean rested her head on his knee and said to him, "Sometimes I wonder if I should've died when Frank Carter shot me. Maybe I _did_."

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

"Nothing really, just thinking out loud I suppose," Jean said, "You know those people, those macrobiotic diet people who never eat anything besides brown rice and bean sprouts?"

"Never heard of any such animal," he remarked, "I don't think they really exist."

"I was reading a book one of them wrote a while back, talked about how before he adopted the macrobiotic lifestyle, he got _so_ sick one night, he about died, and in retrospect he said he _did_ die, the _old_ him died, the _new_ him was born that night…I wonder…maybe something similar happened when I was in surgery. Maybe when I started to wake up halfway through, I died and this is the new me that came out of it."

Hannibal patted her head and said to her, "Now don't go getting the idea of comparing yourself to those tofu-eating whack jobs. They're the nuts that give California a _bad_ name."

Jean laughed hoarsely, choked on another bout of heartburn, and replied, "I don't know, I wonder if it could be possible. Nothing's really gone right since…now that I think of it…nothing's _ever_ gone right in my whole life." She looked up at him and added, "And now look at me, here I am I've only dragged four more people into the mess that's my life."

"Well I wouldn't say that," Hannibal said.

"I would," she replied as she repositioned her head against his knee, "I'll tell you something, Hannibal, been plenty of times I don't even know who I am anymore, and I can't remember who I _used_ to be before either. Lot of the things I've done…and I mean even after Brutus…I'm not very proud of them, though I sure was at the time, or felt like it anyway. Seemed to be a real glory in it all."

"That's the life of a soldier, kid," Hannibal told her, "And I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's your fate…look at me." She tilted her head back to look up at him and he told her, "It doesn't do any good to dwell on what might have been, how your life might've turned out differently, the fact is it wouldn't be any different, because accidents don't carry on this long…what you are, what you do now, is what you're destined to, there's just no other way to look at it."

Jean paused for a beat before she replied, "So you were meant to be a fugitive from the government?"

"Certainly looks that way, doesn't it?" Hannibal asked, "Who doesn't love a good underdog?"

"Or martyr?" she returned, and quoted, "Play the man, Master Ridley."

"Look at all the people we've helped, could we have done that if we were average Joes working 8-5 jobs with the picket fence, wives and 2.3 kids?" he shook his head, "World would be a lot worse off if we didn't do what we did. Naturally it had to come at a price, but we could've been a lot worse off too."

"And this is how it ends," Jean said as she lay back down.

"Well…" Hannibal said, "You know what they say about all good things."

Jean closed her eyes and murmured against Hannibal's leg, "All that glitters is gone."

"That's gold," he told her, "All that glitters is gold."

He felt Jean shake her head 'no', maybe she knew what she was talking about.

"Hannibal," Jean rolled her head back to look up at him and asked, "Isn't there _something_ we can do? Isn't there _some_ way we can get out of here?"

Hannibal scratched his fingers through her hair like he was scratching a dog behind its ear and told her, "Go to sleep, Jean…everything will be alright."

"No it won't," she replied, "Nothing's ever _been_ right."

"What do you mean?" Hannibal asked her.

" 'A lifetime of opportunities misused', that's what Dickens wrote, isn't it?" Jean asked, "That's me…I look back now and can't help wondering what the _hell_ I ever thought I was doing with my life. Anytime I ever thought I'd found a purpose, it turned out to be nothing."

"Well you're young," Hannibal replied with a small smirk.

"Not that it matters much now," she said.

"Believe me, it happens, no matter how old you get," he told her, "But when you think about it, Jean, what have you done that could qualify as a 'misused opportunity'?"

"Well let's face it, Hannibal, _what_ have I ever accomplished?" she asked.

"What's more important?" Hannibal asked, "What you've accomplished in life, or what you've _enjoyed_ in life?"

"That's not an answer, Hannibal," Jean said, "What have I ever accomplished?"

"Besides the obvious?" he returned, "You liberated a man, remember?"

Jean waved it off, "Murdock could've gotten himself released from the V.A. at any old time, he didn't need me for that."

"He did," Hannibal told her, "You gave him a solid reason to get out, to finally be free."

"Murdock's the only one of all of us who's ever been free, he's _always_ been free, even before he was released," Jean told Hannibal, "He can do anything, he doesn't care how ridiculous it is or how ridiculous _he_ looks, he's not worried, he can't be embarrassed, he's not yielded by stigmas, _that_ is free, _truly_ free. He's probably the luckiest person who ever lived."

"How do you figure that?" Hannibal asked her.

"His father walked out on him when he was 2, his mother died when he was 5, he was raised by his grandparents and must've been his mother's parents, therefore there was nobody to hold him to any expectations based on what they were like or what his father was like. He escaped that great parental trap."

"You speak from experience of course," Hannibal half said, half asked.

"I had no brothers and sisters, when you _have_ them you're compared _to_ them, when you don't, your parents compare you to themselves, and when you go to school, you're compared and contrasted to every other kid there: on any team, in any club, any group, compare and contrast, that's all there ever is, no appreciation for the individual person, no room for what _you_ are…everybody expects you to be like someone else, nobody can accept that you're nobody else, you're only yourself and that's all you can be." She shook her head, "Except there's no room for that, so you spend your whole life running wheels and never getting anywhere, trying to figure out what you _are_ supposed to be since there's clearly something wrong with _yourself_. What is that, Big Brother? No, that's the One State, no that's not it either, The Family and UniComp perhaps…it's not a Brave New World, maybe it's the Mockingbird world, definitely _something_ with a nice dystopian ring to it. My it's certainly true what they say about starvation and dehydration affecting the brain, isn't it? Can't think," she tapped the side of her head, "Feel like Snitter."

Hannibal sat back and watched her as she tried to complete her thought, and when it was obvious she couldn't find it, he said, "And you think Murdock's never had to experience any of that?"

"Not as much," Jean said, "His _father_," she said the word venomously, "Sure as hell couldn't be there to say 'when I was your age', and his mother, nice woman though I'm sure she was, could never say when she was his age _or_ that his father never did that, I'm sure his grandparents were so overcome by the death of their daughter they didn't dare give him any of _those_ lectures. Hannibal, do you remember after we got married the first time? I asked what Murdock was like _before_ he 'went crazy' in Vietnam, do you remember? _Nobody_ could remember him being 'normal' before that time…the Air Force, the Thunderbirds, the Army, they all apparently took him as he was, to some extent he had to have already been as he is now, correct? Otherwise the change would've been most obvious and you would recall him _not_ being this way."

"I suppose you're right," Hannibal said, "I never really thought of it before."

Hannibal grunted as he felt Jean's nails dig into his arm. She really didn't _have_ nails after her encounter with Stockwell, but enough pressure behind the grip still had him gritting his teeth.

"You realize of course," Jean said to him, "If we weren't going to die horribly in a few hours, I wouldn't be telling you any of this…"

"Those are always the most interesting ones," he said lightly.

"Do you have time for one more confession?" she asked.

"Always," he answered with smile leaning more towards his trademark variety that always set Face on edge.

"I did something a while back that…I probably _shouldn't_ have, but I haven't had time to decide if it's something to regret," she said.

"What's that?" he inquired.

"A couple weeks ago, I stole some papers from Decker, and then from Fulbright, _and_ from General Bullen…not files, their official stationary, wrote three different letters to the president of the United States, from 3 members of U.S. military personnel, recommending pardons for all of you guys…" she shrugged and said, "If it actually works, it won't be in time to do you any good, but the others…I don't know if it _will_ work, I'm terrified that it won't, but I'm hoping it _will_. If it doesn't…well, if we'd live past this, and it didn't work, I don't know what would be left to try."

Hannibal looked slightly surprised by this revelation. He paused a beat, then pulled Jean towards him and kissed her on the top of her head and told her, "A commendable action, kid."

"If we're turned down again…well, _we'll_ be dead so it won't matter for us, but for the others, I'll have failed," Jean said.

"Not possible," Hannibal insisted, "You had the initiative to try in the first place, _more_ than once, that's more than anyone else has ever done for us, _that's_ what counts. When did you send them out?"

"I…didn't," she confessed, "I got them ready, and I couldn't decide if I _should_ send them or not, so I left them with somebody to mail out incase something happened and I got killed."

"Who?" Hannibal asked.

"Decker's man Friday, Crane," Jean answered, "He's holding onto them for me currently."

Hannibal looked at her curiously and asked, "How'd you manage to talk him into that?"

"Wasn't hard surprisingly," she explained, "Decker's the one who lives for the chase, I think Crane's getting tired of it."

"And…exactly how would he know when it was time to send them out?" Hannibal asked.

"Because it'd be the first time in a year Decker's had any peace and quiet," she answered.

Hannibal laughed and replied, "Smart."

"Like I said, it's not going to do _us_ any good now," Jean shook her head, "I should've sent them out sooner."

"Even if you had, they'd probably still be in limbo somewhere between here and the White House," he told her.

"I'm sorry, Hannibal," she replied.

"Bah," he waved it off.

"Hannibal…" Jean said softly, "One _more_ confession?"

"Sure," he nodded.

"You're pretty good at deducting things, Hannibal, did you ever put it together just _how_ I wound up out here a year after the fact?"

"You said why already, warm weather, job opportunities in movies…"

"Not lies, not the truth either," Jean said, "The truth is I _hoped_ I would find you guys again…mind you, the day we all caught up again, _was_ pure coincidence, but…I mean it, Hannibal, after the Army, after Carter, after the hospital…I wasn't the same anymore. I stayed home for a year, trying to adapt back to the old life, just couldn't happen. I…moved out here, _hoping_ to meet up with you guys again. I…I started writing Murdock when I was back in New York, when he was at the V.A., he couldn't really write back but it was _something_, it was _some_ form of contact. I needed it. You don't know what those first three months out here were like."

"I can imagine," he nodded, and added, "Loneliness is an under-acknowledged disease, as real as cancer, just as deadly as a heart attack."

Jean let out a weak snort and replied, "Probably causes a few too. You don't know how relieved I was when you guys caught me zipping around the course, I thought….'Thank God, _real_ people again', people who…could understand what I'd gone through."

"Better than most, that's for sure," Hannibal said.

He noted that Jean's eyes had taken on a very distant look now, he wondered where exactly she 'was' right now. As if reading his mind, she told him though without making any eye contact with him, "Murdock was there, he's been walking me along the razor's edge every single step of the way, he's always been the one there to say 'this is acceptable', 'this is normal', 'this is what happens' so I knew I wasn't losing my mind…and I can't help wondering now if…" Now she looked up to Hannibal and said, "I swear, Hannibal, when I agreed to marry Murdock the first time, I was _sure_ at the time it was purely to get him out of the V.A., now I wonder if I also did it for my own reasons. Out of the V.A., he needed a place to stay, I had 3 extra rooms, _and_ a double bed in my own, and we'd slept together plenty of times before the year before…you can't _plan_ it much better than that, can you?"

"Fate's a funny thing, kid," Hannibal told her, "Hey you two are happy together, what difference does it make now?"

"If it's true, it's just one more deception in a long line of them," Jean said, "When you can't even remember when you lie and when you're being truthful, _that's_ when you start doubting your sanity…not that it's probably going to make much difference now, right? If we're not dead by tomorrow we'll probably be going insane anyway from…what does this guy Pedavich _do_ to his victims anyway?"

"I'd say not to concern yourself with _that_ little detail except I know you wouldn't listen," Hannibal said, "So I'll just leave it at that."

"Wouldn't it be better _to_ know in order to 'accept death'?" Jean asked.

"No, just like when B.A.'s flying, if the plane crashes and he's knocked out, he doesn't know it, therefore he doesn't tense up, therefore he walks away without a single injury," Hannibal said, "Sometimes ignorance _is_ bliss." He hooked an arm around Jean and pulled her closer to him and told her, "Go on to sleep, kid, I'll keep an eye on everything."

It took a few minutes before Jean settled against him and fell asleep. When Hannibal was sure Jean was out cold and blissfully oblivious, he reached down and tilted her head back to expose her neck. A good, strong neck, usually a sure way to tell who did and did not work out. One quick move…wouldn't take five seconds, and all her problems would be over, _if_ it came down to that, he prayed that it wouldn't. Unfortunately, he knew all too well what was in store. Over the years the A-Team had gone up against every slime ball imaginable: animal poachers, drug smugglers, cultists and Nazis, gangsters who left bodies buried under all sorts of unsuspected places, but _this_ was one case that gave Hannibal indigestion every time he even thought of it. Following a lead from their investigative reporter they liberated from a Russian lockup, they found Pedavich's 'chop shop', no victims at that time, and there had been plenty of chances to clean up before their arrival, but the evidence they'd gathered up on Dimitri and his men had been nonetheless _very_ compelling once the authorities found out. Which left him wondering when and how this guy ever got _out_, let alone on a plane out of Russia and to Los Angeles?

_Everybody keeps records, even ones they never want found, remember Nixon_? He'd said that once to Face, and it was still true in _this_ sadist's case as well. Hannibal read through hundreds of pages of documentation of what only a few of the people Pedavich had eliminated had had to endure before they finally died. True to form when it came to lowest of the low, he had a special preference for targeting women and children. If Pedavich had things his way in a few hours, he'd torture Jean first and force Hannibal to watch long before he ever started on the Colonel. He remembered flipping through the pages of accounts and deciding then and there that he had no faith in the basis that in the eyes of God, one sin was not any worse than the other, and he firmly believed there had to be a specially reserved section of hell for the likes of this guy. And just _why_ was it that _these_ kinds of people were never the ones caught in plane explosions or car crashes or struck by lightning, or even crushed to death by an elevator in some horrible freak accident? Okay, so there was a little bit of sadist in even _him_, but _he_ had a perfectly good excuse for that; dealing with people like _this_ would awaken the vengeful sadist in _anyone_. People who oppose the death penalty would want to take this guy's head off themselves and play catch with it.

Hannibal sighed to himself, the only thing they could do was _wait_, and while he knew the suspense was killing Jean, she still had it better because of the two of them, Hannibal was the only one who knew _what_ they had to look forward to. Since getting out of the war zones from jungles halfway around the world, he never thought that he'd ever again have to contemplate killing someone to spare them from suffering. And if it had been under any other circumstances, he knew that he wouldn't, but everything was working against them this time: he was alone, he didn't know where his men were, he had no way of contacting them to find out, he didn't know where they were, he didn't know how far they were from Los Angeles or if they were still within the area, they had both been thrown into this barren room with nothing on them but the clothes they wore, that door was reinforced and he couldn't possibly kick it open. And even if he could, it wouldn't matter because Dimitri Pedavich always traveled in well company. They could _try_ fighting their way out but the problem was Hannibal knew there would be so many people out there, they wouldn't get any further than knocking a couple of them out before the rest of the guards ambushed them. They could _try_, that was all they could do, and if they failed…he looked down at the girl sleeping against him, if their options ran out, he knew what he had to do, and he wasn't looking forward to it.

* * *

"See anything yet, B.A.?" Face asked into his car radio as he zipped along at a steady pace of 75 miles an hour, slow enough that he could keep his eyes on the road but keep his mind on what the other people on the radio were saying.

"Nothing, there's no sign _anyone's_ been here," was B.A.'s answer.

Face tried again and looked to the skies, "How bout it, Murdock? You seeing anything from up there?"

"Up _where_?" was Murdock's response.

Face felt his eyebrows move up, "What do you mean up _where_? Aren't you in the chopper?"

"Yes, but I'm engaging in a little contouring and a little NOE right now," Murdock said.

"What does that mean, Murdock?" Face asked.

"It _means_," Murdock answered, "I'm either climbing _over_ trees or going _around_ them depending on which is easier to maneuver right now."

Face could hear B.A. coming through the radio waves again, "You crazy fool, whatchu doing on the ground? You supposed to be _in the air_!"

"Some things are easier to see from a lower level," Murdock replied, "And I think I see something!"

"What is it?" Face asked.

"I do believe it's the truck that they took Hannibal away in last night."

"Where?" Face asked, looking ahead incase it turned out he was in the vicinity of it.

"Hang on, I'll give you the coordinations, and then I'm gonna head on and see what's ahead and what we're gonna need to get in," Murdock said, "After that I'm gonna have to ditch this bird and double back to you guys. They tried concealing the truck under a tree that's half down, probably harder to spot actually _on_ the ground, from there…"

"Murdock, you still with us?" Face asked.

"At a higher altitude now but yeah, it's pretty empty clearing after that, looks like about two miles of empty land, and _then_ I see a building up ahead, looks big enough."

"One building in a clearing?" Face asked, "What is it?"

"Uh…looks like it used to be some kind of warehouse, mostly ground level."

"Lot of space for big semi trucks, if it's been emptied out by now, that's plenty of room alright," Face said.

"Lot of trucks around," Murdock came back on the waves, "I don't _see_ anyone but there's gotta be someone there now, it's all too new to be abandoned."

"That's gotta be it, B.A.," Face said, "Where is it, Murdock?"

* * *

27…28…29…30. Hannibal opened his eyes again. He couldn't afford the luxury of sleep. He _knew_ that by all logic, those doors wouldn't be opened until tomorrow, nobody would come for them for at least 12 more hours, but all the same, he couldn't afford to let his guard down for a minute. He had to stay vigil at all times to make sure they weren't ambushed prematurely.

Jean lay a couple feet away from him on the floor, the longer she could sleep the better it would be. And it would be easier for her to stay asleep. He knew how it worked, if you stayed asleep you didn't pay attention to how dehydrated you were, and if you didn't move much when you were awake it was easy to fall back asleep, and forget about starving, forget about the unbelievable thirst, and for a little while it would take the focus off the fact that they might die soon. If she could stay asleep from now, until it was time…it would be better if she did.

Jean had woken up once about an hour ago, while she'd been asleep the last time, her lips had gotten so dry that they essentially glued themselves together. When she tried opening her mouth, they both split and started bleeding, and since then the blood had congealed and her lips were stuck shut again. His own throat felt like sandpaper and cotton all the way down his neck, his tongue was like old shoe leather, his lips felt heavy like they were covered in plaster. His stomach felt like there was a hole in him the size of a basketball and leading all the way out through his back. It wasn't exactly anything new for him; he and the others would've starved to death long ago if it hadn't been for Lin Duk Coo. He still remembered those days in the POW camp well, _too_ well.

Still, that was over 15 years ago, he'd been a lot younger then, he had more endurance back then, or maybe it only felt like it in comparison to now. Who could really tell anymore? But Jean on the other hand, this _wasn't_ something she was used to, it _wasn't_ something that she'd already gone through. And with that in mind, she'd taken the facts of their situation very well; the whole time they'd been there, she'd never said anything, never complained because she knew it wouldn't do any good. It took a lot of character and strength to suffer in silence when you knew there was no hope, he admired that, he was just sorry she had to know what it was like.

His eyes were starting to burn again, so he closed them and mentally started to count to 30. And as he did, he thought back to a conversation they'd had while trapped in this room.

"_Did Murdock tell you about our last client?"_

"_No."_

"_Pregnant woman named Maria Tepe. 8 ½ months pregnant, went into labor during a shootout we had with her ex-husband, who knew stress could help speed up a delivery, eh? Anyway, she waited 2 hours until all the excitement had died down to tell us, and you can guess what happened with Face and B.A., I'm sure."_

"_They were out colder than a dead fish, right?"_

"_Yep, so it was just her, Murdock and myself to bring her baby into this world. It's a pretty amazing thing getting to see new life entering the world."_

_"What was it?"_

"_Girl, 6 pounds, 7 ounces, 18 inches long, completely bald except for one small blonde curl on top of her head."_

"_That must've been nice," Jean commented._

"_It was. Murdock kept her with him until the mother was recovered enough to hold her. Born in the midst of a shootout with her father. Interesting how something so wonderful can come out of something so horrible, eh?"_

_Jean grumbled something to herself. Hannibal continued, "You know Murdock wants kids."_

"_I wouldn't mind a few either someday," Jean said, "But we both know it ain't gonna happen now."_

_Hannibal put an arm around Jean and pulled her close to him as he told her, "Seeing that baby, holding it, it awakened something in Murdock. Man's 40 years old, he's in the prime of his life now."_

"_Yeah well, he's gonna have to find some other prime rib to raise a little Cain with now, isn't he?" Jean asked._

_Hannibal laughed at her attempt at a joke._

"_New life is always a miracle," he'd said, almost reminiscing about something, "Always seems to put things in perspective. Life…is beautiful."_


	3. Chapter 3

Maybe he lingered for a couple of seconds after he reached 30…maybe he'd actually fallen asleep for a few minutes, he didn't know. What he did know was he opened his eyes when he heard noises coming from outside the door. He felt like he was in a haze and everything felt like it was a dream. He tried shaking his head and rubbing his eyes to snap back to reality. He couldn't identify the sounds he was hearing, but if he had to guess, he would wager that there was some kind of struggle going on out there. Maybe they were coming _now_. Jean was still asleep next to him, Hannibal moved in front of her so they wouldn't see her right immediately; he had no time for a plan, as soon as he could see who was coming in, he'd just have to react and hope it did them some good.

The door opened and a bright light shone in and blinded Hannibal, he closed his eyes and lunged back to try and get out of the direct line of fire.

"Hannibal!"

Face? Hannibal opened his eyes and tried to see past the spots flashing in front of him. He recognized Face and Murdock coming in and rushing towards him.

"Colonel!" Murdock's arms suddenly felt _very_ strong as he latched onto Hannibal to hug him, "Colonel are you alright?"

"Murdock, the canteen," Face told him.

"Oh! Oh, right," Hannibal felt something shoved against his mouth and identified it as the lip of a canteen. He tilted his head back and drank some of the water, only a mouthful, then pulled back and told them, "Get Jean," and pointed to where she lay.

Murdock knelt down beside Jean and slipped an arm under her head to prop her up so she could drink. Her lips split open again as the canteen was more or less forced on her, she choked on the first mouthful and woke up coughing and sputtering.

"Murdock!" she weakly exclaimed as she tried to sit up.

"It's alright, darling," Murdock said as he slipped his arms under her to pick her up, "It's alright, we're here now."

"Ohhh my hero," she weakly murmured as she wrapped her arms around him and leaned in to him.

"She's delirious," Face commented.

Murdock lifted her up in his arms and told her, "It's gonna be alright, Saint, we're gonna get out of here, just…" he looked back to the door and told her, "Just don't look, okay? Just keep your eyes closed till we get out of here."

Hannibal felt his eyes widen at Murdock's words, that meant the chop shop was right outside the room this time. He saw B.A. come in the doorway just as Murdock tried tiptoeing past the Sergeant on the way out.

"Hannibal, you okay man?" B.A. asked as he came over to the Lieutenant and the Colonel.

"Fine, I'm fine," he hoarsely answered.

"Come on, B.A., let's get him out of here," Face said.

"No," Hannibal raised a hand when they tried grabbing him, "I'll walk out of here, just help me up."

"You got it, Hannibal," B.A. said and pulled the Colonel to his feet.

"Where, where's Pedavich?" Hannibal asked Face.

"We didn't see him on the way in," Face said, "But we got a lot of his men though."

"That's good," Hannibal said, "Face, you better go help Murdock get Jean out of here."

Face didn't get it but he decided to do as Hannibal said. Hannibal walked out of the room, albeit, he did it leaning on B.A. for support. If he'd had anything in his stomach, it would've turned at the torture equipment that had been prepared in the next room. As it was, he felt like crap and just wanted to get out of there, and at a future time when he was feeling better, come back here and kick the crud out of Pedavich himself.

* * *

Murdock carried Jean out of the warehouse and over to a military cargo truck that they'd brought in to storm the castle with, so to speak. He put her in the back and got her settled on some sandbags that had been piled in, it was the more convenient and closest thing to cushioning that they could bring out with them. Though that pile was pretty much one level and nicely concealed behind a much taller stack of sandbags that hopefully wouldn't do too much rattling around once they got on the road.

"Come on, hon, open your eyes," Murdock said as he tried to get Jean to swallow more water from the canteen.

Jean murmured something but kept her eyes closed and tried turning on her side.

"Come on, Jean," he tried again, "Talk to me."

He got her to drink another mouthful and after that she was a little more inclined to stay conscious but she said to Murdock, "I don't know what to talk about."

"Well talk about anything," Murdock said, "Like, eh, what's your favorite color?"

"I don't _have_ a favorite color," Jean replied as she closed her eyes again.

"Oh sure you do, everybody does," Murdock said.

"Okay," Jean turned on her back and looked up at him, "You tell me what it is then."

"Well I don't know," he scratched his head, "You wear a lot of white."

"Okay fine," Jean turned on her side again, "Then white's my favorite color."

"Yeah but you wear a lot of blue too," Murdock told her.

"Then my favorite color's blue," Jean grumbled, "And what about you? What's your favorite color? Let me guess, plaid."

"Who told you?" Murdock asked.

Jean chuckled under her breath and closed her eyes again.

"No, no, hon, you gotta keep your eyes open," Murdock said, "I need you to talk to me, I need to know what they did to you in there."

"They threw us in the truck, drove us out here, marched us into the room blindfolded, and left us there to starve to death," Jean answered tiredly but matter-of-factly, "That's all."

"You're sure?" he asked.

Jean managed a weak half-nod.

"No-no-no, darling, you gotta stay awake," Murdock told her.

"I-am-tired," she told him.

"I know, but you gotta stay awake for me until I know you're alright," he said, "Come on, Jean, talk to me."

"What about?" she asked.

"Well…you remember the time, remember the time that Faceman got mad at us for washing his car with Dawn detergent? You remember how steaming mad he was? And you said that you use it all the time on your own car, and if it was good enough for _your_ car, then it was good enough for…"

"That bleached piece of scrap," Jean recalled, "I remember."

Murdock heard footsteps behind him and saw Face stepping up onto the back of the truck, "How's it going, Murdock?"

"Handy-dandy, Faceman, but I need a little help getting her settled in for the ride," Murdock said.

Face got up in the back with them and helped Murdock get Jean restrained against the sandbags since they predicted a bumpy road trip in their immediate future. Then, Face dug out a couple heavy army blankets and draped one over Jean, and then covered it with a plastic tarp.

"By the way, Murdock," Face said, "That was some ingenious planning on your part, I didn't know you could speak Russian."

Murdock turned to Face and replied, sounding as dumbfounded as the Lieutenant did, "Neither did I."

Face just _stared_ at him.

"I'm still not sure what I said," Murdock added, "But whatever it was, I guess it worked."

"Oh boy," Face said.

Face looked back to the warehouse and saw Hannibal and B.A. were just coming out. Hannibal had managed to make it this far more or less on his own two feet, but he was starting to wind down; he hadn't slept in over 24 hours, he hadn't had any food or water for almost as long, the strength he'd held onto was leaving him and B.A. took the hint and picked Hannibal up and carried him the rest of the way to the truck.

"Very funny, B.A.," Hannibal said, failing at hiding how exhausted he sounded.

B.A. just giggled and remarked, "Know what they say about turnabout, Hannibal, 'bout _time_ it was _you_ getting hauled around unconscious instead of _me_."

B.A. carried Hannibal over to the truck and Murdock and Face pulled him up and got him settled on the sandbags alongside Jean. As Murdock was getting Hannibal strapped down so he didn't go slipping and sliding during the ride back, Face told B.A. to get the truck started and get them out of there before Pedavich came back.

"What happened to his men?" Hannibal asked.

"Don't worry about that, Hannibal, we took care of them," Face said.

"With what?" Hannibal asked.

"With seven borderline psychotic Vietnamese people," Murdock explained, "Who are going to be spending the rest of the day breaking in new piñata clubs."

Hannibal chuckled weakly.

They had just started moving and were getting out of the clearing in front of the warehouse when Face saw another vehicle heading their way.

"Uh oh, looks like our host," he said. He leaned over to knock on the truck roof and told B.A. to speed up. Murdock went over to a second pile of sandbags on the other side of the truck bed and was rifling through some odds and ends that had been packed before they came out. Jean was half awake and trying to sit up when she saw Murdock emerge from the sandbags with a bazooka in hand.

"This ought to fix his little covered wagon," Murdock simultaneously sneered and smirked maniacally.

Face heard a gunshot and could feel the bullet just zip over his head, he crouched down behind the sandbags as more shots followed, and he told Murdock, "So fix him already!"

Jean watched as Murdock got into a position to aim, aimed the bazooka, fired it and a very few seconds later, they saw the truck following them flip during the explosion that occurred when the rocket propelled grenade detonated on impact. Jean felt her upper body shoot up despite her restraints and let out a high pitched howling cheer as she reached over and hugged Hannibal in the excitement. Hannibal was just about unconscious from exhaustion, but he managed a small laugh at the sight behind them and told Murdock, "You done good, Captain."

"Yeah," Face agreed, "But what say we turn around and take turns kicking the crud out of him just for good measure?"

"A tempting offer, Lieutenant," Hannibal tiredly remarked, "But I'm afraid I'll have to pass…" and with that, he was unconscious.

* * *

Maggie Sullivan had known for several years that even as a physician, she was severely underpaid for her work, especially anytime the A-Team paid her a visit with a member to patch up. If more than _one_ of them was injured, it quickly became a three ring circus, and _this_ time she decided things were as chaotic as the funhouse at Coney Island.

The good news was Hannibal hadn't been shot, nor had Jean. The bad news was that they were both exhausted and dehydrated, add to the fact that as soon as they were brought in, they had to get out of their MP uniforms that were still damp from almost two days ago and were starting to border on moldy. Then they had to be examined, during which they found out Jean had wrenched her ankle sometime during their capture, and it was so swollen they practically had to cut her boot off. After that, both of them had to get cleaned up, and _then_, since they didn't have any extra clothes with them, separated into two rooms until further notice. So Maggie was finding herself occupied with running around either keeping the men away from Hannibal even though he wouldn't sleep and kept having the others visit with him, to the point she threatened to sedate him if he didn't behave, or chasing Murdock out of her bedroom where Jean was currently recuperating.

"Murdock," she said as she forced him out of the room for the third time that day, "I already told you that Jean needs to be left alone, and besides that you can't be in there."

"Why not?" Murdock asked.

"Because she doesn't have any clothes on," Maggie pointed out.

"Well that's nothing Hannibal hasn't seen before," Murdock replied, "Besides, she's in your bed, I'm not seeing anything."

"And I intend to make sure that you _don't_," Maggie replied cynically, "Now go find Face and B.A. and stay with them and tell both of them to _stay away_ from my patients and don't wake them up again. And if Hannibal tries calling anyone in to see him again, let him know I'll be very glad to tranquilize him to prevent any repeats."

Murdock disappeared around the corner and when he saw Maggie head off to another part of the house, he sneaked right back in to the bedroom. Jean applauded him as he entered.

"Thank you, thank you, please, no pictures," he said as he bowed left and right, "For my first trick I will invent sibling rivalry."

"How about inventing a better way to rehydrate that with all this salt water they're making me drink?" Jean asked, "I'm about to puke from it all. And when are they going to feed me?"

"Oh you're hungry are you?" Murdock asked, and in a borderline malicious tone as if he was deliberately trying to make her sick, he asked, "Would you like a grilled sandwich with pickles and peanut butter on it?"

"Ordinarily it would sound great but I'm waterlogged," Jean told him.

"And now," Murdock said in one of his kookier voices as he strode over by the bed and picked up a pair of pliers that were left on the dresser, "We are going to play doctor."

"Oh, Dr. Vern the veterinarian?" Jean asked coyly.

Her remark was so unexpected, Murdock collapsed hands and face first against the dresser laughing.

"Naughty-naughty," he told her as he waved the pliers menacingly at her.

Jean sat up in the bed and kept the covers pulled high but held her arms out for Murdock, he all but hopped over to the bed and hugged her; he quickly found out that Jean's strength had returned to her as she was nearly choking him.

"Well this ain't exactly a tall blonde but it'll do," he said with a goofy grin on his face.

"Murdock, you know I love you," Jean hugged him tighter, then pulled back and asked him, "But who the _hell_ would ever trust _you_ with a bazooka?"

"Well it worked, didn't it?" he asked.

"_Very_ much," she replied.

Murdock noticed that Jean's lips were still cracked and split. He looked through Maggie's beauty ritual items on the dresser and found a small tub of petroleum jelly. He popped the cap off, dipped one fingertip in and applied a thick layer to her lips and told her, "Smile."

Through gritted teeth she got out a very coherent, "Bleck."

"I know," he replied as he put the tub back on the dresser, "But at least it'll be easier to talk now."

"Murdock, how is Hannibal?" Jean asked.

"Beats me, Maggie won't let us get near him," Murdock shook his head, "She won't let us near him, she won't let me in here with you, she's making it very hard to have any fun around here."

Jean sat up further and wrapped her arms around Murdock tight and told him, "I thought I'd never see you again."

"Couldn't happen, darling, I wouldn't permit it, you should know that," he said.

Jean pulled back and the smile was gone from her face as she asked Murdock, "What happened to that Russian guy?"

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about him anymore, darling," Murdock said, "You see there were unforeseen complications when his car rolled over."

"He died?" she asked.

"No…but by the time he was pulled out, his legs were smashed and his larynx was crushed, he's going to be a silent potato for the rest of his days," Murdock explained.

"Just figures," Jean said, "You guys fire thousands of rounds of bullets and explosives at people, _never_ hit them, and yet you manage to cause an explosion that leaves _this_ jerk paralyzed and mute without even touching him…now _that's_ beyond words."

Murdock chuckled and responded, "I try, darling, I try."

"What about Stockwell?" Jean asked.

"He's still in the hospital, unconscious," Murdock told her.

"Well what about Fulbright? What was he doing there the other night?" she asked him.

"That one we're still working on," he said.

The door opened and Maggie froze at the threshold and was glaring at Murdock.

"Murdock, I told you before to _stay out_ of here," she said as she strong armed him out of the room, "Now _keep_ out this time," and she kicked the door shut behind him.

"What'd you have to do that for?" Jean asked, "We were having fun."

"You need to rest," Maggie told her.

"That's all I did while we were locked up, just sit back and wait to be horribly maimed and murdered," she replied, "Were it not for this grapefruit in my foot now, I'd be up and out of here by now."

Maggie was holding a well worn gown that had Velcro straps on it and said, "Alright Jean, this is a little large but you should be able to wear it." She'd already been through her own closet and deduced that Jean was too big to wear any of her clothes.

"This belong to a patient of yours?" Jean asked.

"Yes."

"It's a _maternity_ gown, isn't it?" Jean asked.

"Yes," Maggie answered.

"Story of my life," Jean tossed it across the foot of the bed and said, "Sorry, Maggie, I can't wear gowns, it's not becoming of me. Didn't Hannibal leave some extra clothes of his here when he'd stay the night?"

"Yes but _he's_ currently occupying them," she answered, "Besides, his would be _much_ larger on you than this."

"So what? I've had to make do with B.A.'s clothes at a moment's notice, compared to that, Hannibal's aren't so bad," Jean said, "Maggie, how _is_ Hannibal?"

"For the most part he's alright and both of you should be able to go home before tomorrow," Maggie started to say.

"But?"

"But," she added, "He injured his back somewhere along the way and I'm putting him on some painkillers for it."

"Oh boy," Jean said, "I hope they're not the same ones he was put on when he got that shrapnel in his leg, when those drugs kicked in he was absolutely bonkers and he had this _crazy_ grin on his face."

* * *

By the time the A-Team returned to their house and had B.A. take Hannibal up to his room and put him in bed, the Colonel's eyes were wide open but didn't seem to actually be looking at anything and he had a widespread grin that seemed to channel Conrad Veidt when he was 'The Man Who Laughs'.

"I guess that's what you'd call some _real_ good drugs, eh Murdock?" Jean asked as she straightened out the shirt of her pajamas she'd changed into as soon as they got in the house.

"Certainly looks like it," Murdock answered.

Face looked down at the Colonel and grunted, "He _looks_ like the Joker!"

"I guess he can't be in any pain then," Jean said, "Go figure, all the crazy stunts Hannibal pulls on all those missions, jumping out of helicopters, onto trains, crashing through windows and skylights, all at his age, and he pulls his back out when the truck hits a bump in the road."

"Well he's going to have a while to recover from it now," Face said as he drew the covers up on the Colonel, "Maggie instructed we keep him on bed rest for a couple days just to make sure he doesn't do anything _stupid_ to make his condition worse."

"Yeah, we know that could _never_ happen," she murmured.

"And now," Murdock said to Jean, "For the other shoe to drop."

"What?" she asked.

The two men said nothing and merely stared at her. Jean put 2 and 2 together and shook her head, "Uh-uh, forget it."

She tried to get away but they grabbed her and marched her over to the bed and more or less threw her in alongside Hannibal.

"We're learning," Face said with a sly smirk, "This time we're going to keep you two in the same place so it'll be easier to keep an eye on _both_ patients."

"There's nothing wrong with me," Jean said as she tried to get up.

Murdock pushed her back down, "Not now, no, but Maggie stressed how important it is you take it easy for a while, _especially_ with your ankle _even_ though the swelling _has_ gone down considerably. And we all took a vote you're going to spend your recuperation _here_."

"In bed with the Colonel," Jean grunted, "I hear one smart remark out of _anybody_, I'm gonna bust you in the nose and tie your ears in a bow for Christmas."

"Just take it easy," Face said as he took the opportunity to tuck her in, do it tightly enough it was comparable to putting a sardine in its tin, "Don't get excited."

"Don't tell me not to get excited, nothing makes you do something more than some idiot telling you _not_ to," Jean told him.

"Come on, Jean," Murdock came over to her side of the bed and roughly fluffed the pillows under her head, "Just play nice and we'll let you out of here sooner."

Jean grunted something under her breath as she turned on her side. Murdock went over to the other side of the bed to tuck Hannibal in; by now Hannibal still had that large grin on his face but his eyes were all but closed, but he surprised both men by suddenly flinging his arms far out to the sides as if he was expecting a hug. Face slowly inched back but Murdock took a large step towards the Colonel and was happy to oblige.

"Thank you, Captain," Hannibal said in a hushed voice, "Thank you for…getting us out."

"Any time, Colonel," Murdock told him, "Just don't make me have to do it again."

Hannibal laughed weakly and replied, "I'll try."

* * *

Hannibal tried raising his arm but his shoulder felt tight, opening his eyes he stretched his arms over his head and he heard a loud CRACK come from somewhere in his back, a couple seconds later he felt the pain that accompanied the sound. Oof, _now_ he could move his shoulder right. He rolled over onto his side and saw Jean was asleep beside him in the bed. Everything came rushing back to him. In retrospect it all seemed like a dream, it _felt_ like a dream, but he knew it had been no dream, it had been real, all of it real, all _too_ real, even…he groaned in remembrance.

Jean would never know, and he would never tell, just how close she had come to dying, not _just_ being killed, but at the hands of somebody she had trusted with her life several times over. She _couldn't_ know. He knew that Jean was old enough and mature enough to know what they all knew, that yes there was such a thing as a fate worse than death, he knew she understood that, and he was sure she shared their opinions on the matter. But if she ever knew how close he had come to snapping her neck to spare her an even worse fate…no, she could overlook Face choking her in his sleep, she could overlook Murdock strangling her during a flashback, but he wasn't sure that if she knew the truth about this time, that she would ever see him the same again. He couldn't afford to have her always second guessing if it was safe going off alone with him, because he knew there would be more situations in the future when it was just the two of them in a tight spot, it was inevitable.

Jean rolled over in her sleep and bumped up against Hannibal. He put an arm around her and pulled her over further so she was resting her head against his chest. At the time he hadn't allowed his emotions to enter into play much, because he knew if he did that, he wouldn't have been able to kill her if he'd had to. Now that it was all over, he could let himself think about all the things he couldn't then, not because he wanted to, but simply because they couldn't be ignored anymore. His heart pounded hard in his chest as he heard Jean's breathing and felt her body moving against him as she inhaled and exhaled in her sleep, blissfully unaware of what had almost happened and what had _actually_ happened. Feeling her presence so close to him, reality finally sank in and he was breathing harder now.

_Oh kid_, he thought to himself, _You have no idea_. And he was for keeping it that way.

For all intents and purposes, with rare exceptions, Hannibal appeared to hold most women at arm's length, this including the ones he worked with frequently. Though it was usually Face's area of expertise, Hannibal was sure more than once he'd come off to Amy as condescending and chauvinistic, over the years he'd had that effect on quite a few women in fact. It wasn't that he had anything against women in general, he held nothing against the species as a whole, he knew full well that there were millions of women in the world damn well capable of fighting back and protecting themselves, his own mother had been testimony to that. But he _knew_ Amy, just as over the years he had _known_ many women, in the end it didn't matter the sex, the size, the build, it was merely a matter of who had it in them to survive at all costs, and who did not.

Now Amy, for lack of a better example, was a very sweet, very charming, very intelligent girl, she had done a tremendous service to the Team by helping them over the years. However, she was still very new to this game and had a lot to learn. She had it _in_ her, it was just a matter of her _realizing_ it first. Some people were like that, they needed their ability to survive _awakened_ in them before they could actually put it to any use. So far she'd been able to hold her own very well, and yet…he still thought back to when she'd confided in him that a man was following her home from work every day She'd tried to brush it off, she had taken offense to their overprotective ways with her, but in the end they'd been right, had she taken matters into her own hands she would've been alone in her house when that nut job came busting into the place, and then what?

Now, the question remained, _was_ a view sexist when the other side had the same one? After all Jean had been right on board with Hannibal and the others, he could still hear their conversation.

"_But __why__ would anybody be after me?" Amy asked._

_Jean looked at her and laughed, "You're kidding, right? You're what…" she looked Amy up and down, "About 110 pounds? You're young, you're pretty, you live alone, everything about you says easy target to a __lot__ of guys, fortunately it's a far smaller amount that's actually going to try doing anything about it."_

"_As you can see," Hannibal cynically said, "She's had a lot of time to think about this, it's all she can do since nobody would ever be interested in her enough to try the same thing."_

"_Oh wait a minute, Jean," Hannibal told her, "Just out of curiosity, if it was __you__ this guy was after…what would __you__ do to him?"_

_Jean looked back at them with a bored look on her face and nonchalantly asked him, "Before or after I bash his head in?" And with that she disappeared into the kitchen._

_Hannibal pointed back towards her and told Amy, "And you know she can do it…__can__ you?"_

Of course, there was also to consider the fact that Jean did not usually think _like_ a woman, so perhaps it _was_ a one-way view. Didn't mean it wasn't true though. He also remembered when Face and Murdock caught the guy after he broke into Amy's house.

"_Well let me make something clear to you, __and__ you may relay this message to anybody else who may be interested. You see this woman here?" Hannibal pointed to Amy, "This, is my daughter. And if __anything__ ever happens to her, you are going to have to answer to me," he moved over to Jean and added, "Her sister", moved over to Face, "Her brother", then over to Murdock, "Her brother", and over to B.A. and concluded, "And her little brother."_

And it _was_ true. Where he was concerned, this sorry bunch of people _were_ his children. Face, B.A., Murdock, those men were his boys, his sons. Amy, to an outsider, their relationship could go either way, and he never knew whether to feel flattered, or nauseated when somebody would make the assumption that Amy was his girlfriend. Where he was concerned, she was as much his daughter as if he'd spent the whole 27 years raising her. _Then_ they came to Jean, and his mind went blank. Exactly what _was_ she? Technically an in-law. Technically she could probably even pass as a son if she tried, she already had a lot of experiencing in playing the part of a man. There was no elaborate preparation when she went out to be shot on film as a stunt_man_, she put on the suit, hardened her facial expressions and that was it. She knew how to carry herself, she'd already been a professional in that field before she ever met them. She was good enough to fool Lynch, the MPs, she'd even been good enough to fool everyone at the Federal Building on _several_ occasions. And therein lay the root for their current problems, some rat somewhere in the works of that place.

Nope, his mind was made up, she was a daughter just as much as Amy was, and like Amy, she was his just as sure as if he'd raised her up himself, and he supposed in a sense he _had_. If there was any doubt about the nature of their relationship, it had been cemented during another conversation they'd had in the holding room just as Jean started to wind down from fatigue and hunger.

* * *

He'd asked her, _"How does this compare to the tool shed at the Winchester Camp?"_

She'd responded, _"Oh man, I haven't thought about that place in a long time."_

"_I remember it,"_ Hannibal told her, _"I remember the time we went through getting you ready for it. Do you remember?"_ She didn't answer and he'd taken that as grounds to continue, _"Ooh you were stubborn, I used some of my best material from the Army and you never even flinched. I guess you took the 'yes sir, idiot' meditation to a whole new level."_

"_Not exactly,"_ she'd replied.

"_Oh yeah?"_ he'd asked, _"What'd you do during basic training? Just tune out everything the drill sergeants said, save the last part that determined if you answered 'yes sir' or 'no sir'?"_

Jean nodded_, "Yeah I did that, but that's not what I'm talking about."_

"_What then?" _Hannibal inquired.

"_I don't think you'd understand,"_ she said.

"_Try me,"_ he told her.

She looked at him sheepishly and explained, _"I tried to block out everything you were saying…because it was all just to get a response out of me, right? That was the idea, get it all out in the open first so I wouldn't respond during the real thing? Well…I was so nervous the whole time you were screaming at me that I wouldn't make it, that I'd crack."_

"_Well that was the idea, to see if you would before it actually counted,"_ Hannibal said.

"_You don't get it,"_ Jean shook her head, _"If I hadn't been able to hold it together…if I would've broken down during your drill sessions…I would've crawled under a rock and died, from sheer embarrassment."_

"_That's a severe attitude to have, kid, that's what the Army was built on,"_ he'd told her, _"I know for fact when I was in the Army…when I was in Korea and __I__ was the new guy, I know I cried myself to sleep on plenty of occasions."_

"_At night…not on the course, not in your commanding officer's presence, there's a difference,"_ Jean remarked.

"_Yeah well…fast forward about 15 years, I'm on the other side of it, breaking in more young men than I could even count, and I can guarantee you most of them were bawling like babies plenty of times before I got done with them. It's all a part of the process."_

"_And the ones who didn't?"_ Jean asked.

"_Most of those, shipped out on the psycho ward, self destructive and looking to take anyone and everyone else down with them that they could,"_ he'd answered, _"That's how the saying goes, don't worry when you do feel something, when you do react, worry when you don't."_

"_But what about the others?" _Jean asked. Surely he couldn't mean that Murdock or B.A. ever were…

"_Like I said, it's all part of the process,"_ Hannibal told her, _"All perfectly normal."_

"_Easy for you to say now, the big bad hardened Colonel who fought in two wars,"_ Jean said, _"It's different when you're in __my__ position."_

"_Why is that?"_ he asked.

"_I told you, you wouldn't understand,"_ Jean said.

"_Then __make__ me,"_ he told her.

Jean shook her head, _"I can't, because you never had to grow up like I did."_

"_Which is what?"_ he asked.

"_Paranoid, on your guard,"_ she said, _"You come into this world and you have two parents and they're both very different, which is how they're supposed to be. Parents aren't supposed to have favorite kids, but believe me kids definitely have favorite parents."_

"_And I can guess, yours is your mother,"_ Hannibal said.

"_Mothers are easier. You can go to them about anything at any time, it doesn't matter what it is, how bad, how embarrassing, that's what they're there for…but fathers?"_ she shook her head, _"No, quite a different set of rules there…everything's much stricter, more disciplined, you conduct yourself __very__ professionally in front of them."_

"_He told you that?"_ Hannibal asked in disbelief.

"_No,"_ Jean answered, _"That's just the way I've always been around him. Fathers come with terms and conditions and you try so much harder to be perfect for them even though you know they're never going to approve of you or anything you do. It would be easier if they just forgot you ever existed and you never had to talk to them."_

"_Why?"_ Hannibal inquired.

"_You know your mother would never think any less of you, no matter what you do, but you'd just die if your father did, and you __knew__ he did. So like I said, you conduct yourself in a very different way around him than you do around your mother."_

Hannibal's mind was spinning, _"Where'd you ever get that idea from?"_

"_Well think about it, Hannibal, it makes sense,"_ Jean told him, _"From day one boys are taught that it's weakness to cry or to show __any__ emotion, in girls it's acceptable, with girls being weak is acceptable, __why__? That's the question I could never come to terms with, if it wasn't acceptable for one, why is it for the other? Men are taught not to tolerate weakness but suddenly it's okay when it's the women in their lives, again, why? So I always made sure that no matter what happened, I __never__ came off as being weak."_

Well, Hannibal thought the pieces were starting to fall into place but the picture still wasn't quite clear. He said to her, _"Apparently somebody should've gone to the trouble of pointing out the guidelines."_

"_The worst part is it might well have been all for nothing,"_ Jean said, _"Further proof of my whole live being lived in vain, for nothing. After all if it's true what they say about parents having unconditional love for their children, then that means I killed myself all those years to prove a point that doesn't even exist, doesn't it?"_

"_Maybe,"_ was all he was willing to say in answer.

"_But you still don't get it, Hannibal,"_ she said, _"When we took you to the hospital and they took your appendix out, it dawned on me while we were waiting for you to come out of the OR, it hit me that somehow, somewhere, there was a switch made, __you__ suddenly meant more to me as a father figure than my own father did…what does that say about me?"_

A good question, but he thought he had an answer that was just as good. _"I don't know if you've noticed, but I tend to have that effect on people who know me long-term, I have three guys who can certainly prove it, and they're all a lot older than you are, and were older than you are now when it first started."_

"_The irony of it is,"_ Jean said after a brief pause, _"I've been running in the same circles with you, but __you__ have seen me at my worst a __lot__ more than my own dad ever did. I suppose because I know what to expect from __you__."_

Now _that_ hurt.

"_Kid,"_ he'd said to her, _"That's the problem, you spend all your time running around trying to prove something that doesn't need to be proved. You're human, it's an unfortunate and indisputable fact, and nobody's going to hold that against you,"_ he offered a small smirk as he added, _"It happens to all of us."_

Jean didn't seem to pay much attention to what he said and she looked at the floor below. After a few seconds she looked back to him and asked, _"If we weren't about to be mutilated in a few hours…if we could get out of here…be honest, Hannibal, would you want me married to your Captain?"_

"_It's not for me to say,"_ Hannibal told her, _"You two are adults and can make that decision for yourselves…but to answer…__yes__, I would."_

It was a conversation they'd had before, but Jean still seemed surprised by his answer.

"_I know I'm hard on you, probably more than I need to be, and I know I don't say it enough, but I happen to like you, kid,"_ he told her, _"I just don't always know what to __do__ with you."_

"_Join the club,"_ she replied, _"I can't help wondering though, if it's the right decision. What matters…what __would__ matter if we'd live past this, would be what's best for Murdock."_

"_What's best for __both__ of you,"_ he'd corrected her.

"_There's also the matter of what's best for the Team, if it doesn't stick together then everything's gone to hell,"_ she said.

"_We survived it once, we will again, don't worry about that,"_ he told her.

"_Is it best for him, though?"_ Jean asked, _"Or is it just the easy way out?"_

"_Kid, nothing about you is easy, so it has to be the right way,"_ Hannibal explained, _"We've talked about this before…I never intended for us to be living the way we are this long after 'Nam. By now we __all__ could've settled down and had a dozen kids between us."_

"_Wasn't it you who said mistakes don't carry on this long?" _she asked, _"That if your life is this way now it's because it's meant to be?"_

"_Doesn't make it easy though,"_ he'd replied, _"It gets tired, believe me there are plenty of days all of us, __even__ Face, would rather be leading a normal, mundane, boring life with a family to raise than always being on the run. Thus far Murdock's the only lucky one who actually stands a chance at it."_

"_What if we're wrong?"_ Jean had asked him,_ "What if Murdock's meant to marry someone else? Face himself said that he could come up with a dozen veterinarians, dental assistants and waitresses better suited for Murdock than I am…maybe he's right."_

"_He's wrong,"_ Hannibal said, _"Murdock can get along with just about anybody, and he's had plenty of chances over the years, but he never took them."_

Jean didn't seem convinced, and she told Hannibal why, _"I already hurt him once, I made him marry me and it didn't work, and then I put the burden on him to decide if we stay married or not. I can't do that to him again if we're wrong. It was such a simple plan at the time, what could possibly go wrong? We get Murdock released, then we get married, the Army can't touch him…the problem was we only did it for show, we didn't know then that we were actually going to fall in love. If we'd known that…"_

"_You __wouldn't__ have married him?"_ Hannibal asked.

"_No, no, I would, I would've done anything to get him out of the hospital, I couldn't leave him there and live with myself,"_ she said.

Hannibal nodded and mulled it over a bit before he said to her, _"I'm sorry, Jean."_

"_That's alright, just don't do it again,"_ she parroted his earlier words, including, _"Do what again?"_

"_Huh?"_

_"Do what again?"_ she repeated.

"_Last week when we were arguing about Murdock, I'm sorry that I hit you."_

She'd shrugged, _"Don't think about it, I don't."_

"_You didn't deserve it. I'm still having trouble coming to terms with the fact that there is someone else who's looking out for his best interest, for the longest time that fell on me,"_ he said, _"So you're just going to have to bear with me."_

"_I have so far,"_ she replied, _"We can both agree that we want what's best for Murdock, and that's a problem because we have different ideas on the matter, which is probably why we were initially at each other's throats as much as we were. I'm not proud of the things I said to you back then. But you don't understand, Hannibal…I love Murdock, I really do, I don't want to hurt him again, I would rather do __anything__ than do that again. I would rather he find someone else to be with than we go through this whole dance again and wind up even worse off than the last time." _She looked down at the floor and added, _"But I guess it's going to happen anyway since we're never getting out of here. And probably just as well, I wouldn't even know where to start, I don't know how to be a wife."_

"_Well you did a pretty good job of faking it the first time,"_ he told her, _"Of course then there's the other side of it: children."_

"_Bad idea,"_ Jean remarked, _"I don't know the first thing about being a mother either."_

"_Neither did mine before she had me,"_ Hannibal pointed out, _"It's all a learning process, but you already know more about how to handle kids based on how __you__ grew up, so long-term I think you'd get the hang of it."_ He got a strange, almost emotional look in his eyes as he continued, _"I would like very much to see __somebody__ on my Team have children and pass on their legacy,, before I take leave of this veil of tears and laughter."_

"_Hannibal, please,"_ Jean's voice was becoming thick with tears again, _"Don't talk like that, please!"_

Hannibal moved over to her and held her close as she started crying again; he leaned back against the wall and rubbed her back and told her, _"It's alright, kid, go ahead and cry, you've got every right to."_

He let her wear out after a few minutes before he patted her on the back and told her, _"You see, you're __not__ ready to admit defeat yet, that's good, neither am I. There's still a chance that B.A., Face and Murdock will find us before those Russian goons come back."_

"_How much of a chance?" _Jean asked quietly.

"_It doesn't matter, as long as there's __any__ chance, that's all we need. For now we'll just bide our time and keep our ears open, maybe we'll pick up on something that'll help us,"_ he told her.

"_I hope so, Hannibal, I __hope__ so,"_ she said, then after a brief pause added, _"But what if I'm wrong? What if we're wrong? What if we wind up miserable together again?"_

Hannibal only replied with, _"What if you two were always meant to get married?"_

She looked up at him and said flatly, _"You are __no-help__, Hannibal,"_ and rested her head against the crook in his neck as she broke into what sounded like simultaneous crying and laughter.

"_Thanks for noticing, it's my specialty,"_ he replied with his trademark smile.

* * *

And after _that_, he was supposed to place one hand at the back of her head, the other over her neck and _twist_ until he heard a _snap_, not to put her out of her misery but to spare her from true misery. No. Hannibal could never tell anyone about what happened, but he would always be grateful that Murdock had come through and gotten them out when he did. _Nobody_ should ever be put in the position that he was, that he seriously had to contemplate that option.

In her sleep, Jean pressed harder against him. Hannibal stroked through her hair and patted the back of her head. No, she could never know what had been going through his mind at that time; she had enough issues to work through as it was, he didn't think they'd ever recover from the shock of that revelation. It was bad enough he was going to have to live with that on his conscience for the rest of his life, but that was his cross to bear.

_I'm sorry, kid_, he thought to himself, _So sorry._

He knew the dangers involved, he had tried to get Jean out while there was still time, he'd been wrong, and because of his mistake, they both could've died. The job of a commanding officer seemed easy, if one of your men made a mistake, you could yell at them, make them run the obstacle course 10 more times and make them sorry they'd ever been born, let alone that they could slip up. But when you were the leader, and _you_ made a mistake, when _you_ screwed up, that was something else altogether.

So now he was playing the part of father to someone else. He could deal with that. To another young woman no less, fine. He remembered when they'd first met Jean, she had described her life pre-Army as being flighty, and it seemed she still held herself in a similar regard. No, he thought as he subconsciously hugged her tighter to him, there was nothing flighty about someone ready and willing to sacrifice their own life; she'd laid down her own life to make sure Face didn't get taken instead, so that worst case scenario, Murdock would still have B.A. _and_ Face in his life. There weren't even words that could begin to describe what that had meant to Hannibal when he'd found out.

Hannibal felt his throat get tight, it felt like it was being pinched. He willed himself not to try and clear his throat; he didn't want Jean waking up and asking what was wrong. For his own reasons in an ironic twist, he didn't want _her_ to see _him_ crying now, because he didn't want to have to explain what was wrong, and the way he felt right now, he wouldn't be able to lie if asked about it either. So for the time being, he suffered in a silence of his own and waited for the tightness of his throat and the stinging of his eyes to pass, for the tears to stop coming.


	4. Chapter 4

Jean felt her ankle throbbing and she rolled onto her back to take the pressure off of it. Opening her eyes she saw it was light in the room now, so it must've been early morning. She didn't know how long she'd been asleep in that position, but she was sore from it now. She stretched and yawned and looked over to the other side of the bed and saw Hannibal. He was still asleep, and it was now, Jean must've been seeing him for the first time to see what he had worn to bed. Nothing fancy, a pair of boxers and a T-shirt that bordered more towards sleeveless. Jean couldn't right offhand recall if she'd seen him like this before, but now that she saw him, she started laughing, and within a few seconds it escalated to loud, shrieking, uncontrollable laughter.

Hannibal opened one eye in response to the noise, then the other, then he got both of them opened and asked Jean what was so funny. Jean was flat on her back and looked like she was going to die from laughing so hard, her voice came out in hysterical shrieks the first few times she tried to talk.

"Y-you, I never noticed before," Jean said, "Your arms are so _scrawny_! No _wonder_ you're always wearing long sleeves, so nobody would notice!"

Hannibal didn't have any idea what she was talking about. He looked down at his arms one by one, and shrugged, they didn't look any different to him now than they had in his whole adult life. But for some reason that seemed to be the funniest thing Jean had ever seen, she was still flat on her back laughing.

"I don't get it," he said, "What's so funny?"

"You, the big bad leader of the A-Team, and you got chicken wings for arms," Jean croaked as she grabbed him by the bicep on one arm and shook it, "So that's why you never take off your jacket."

The bedroom door opened and Murdock stuck his head in, "Everything okay, Colonel?"

"I think so," Hannibal said as he sat up, "Would you come in here and do something with _that_, though?"

Murdock entered the room, went over to the other side of the bed and pulled Jean up into a sitting position and asked her, "How you doing, Saint?"

"Oh fine, Murdock," she got out over a giggle.

He examined her ankle, it was still slightly swollen and based on Jean's sudden gasping breath, hurt when he touched it.

"You gonna be able to walk on that?" he asked her.

"Sure, see?" and she sprang to her feet, but immediately started to fall back towards the bed.

Murdock caught her and said, "I think I better help you."

Jean smacked his hands away and told him, "Really, Murdock, I'm a grown woman, I don't need any help going to the bathroom, thank you _very much_." She pushed up on her feet again and limped out of the bedroom.

"How' you doing, Colonel?" Murdock asked.

"I'm fine, Murdock," he said, "So have you managed to find anything out yet?"

"Uh…not yet, Hannibal," Murdock said, "So far Stockwell is still in intensive care, and Fulbright's been keeping to himself lately."

Hannibal nodded grimly, "Been keeping a tail on him?"

"Oh yeah, a _very_ reliable one…what's the matter, Hannibal?" Murdock asked as he saw the Colonel's hands reach for under his hips.

"Whatever I did to my back must be working its way out inch by inch," Hannibal said, "Now it's going down to my legs."

"Maggie sent some pills home for you to take," Murdock explained.

"_Okay_…" Hannibal said whiningly, sounding like Face when he was met with a job he didn't want, "Let me have them."

A couple minutes later Jean came hobbling back into the bedroom, Murdock helped her back over to the bed and helped her get settled in.

"Now," he told her as he tucked her in again, "If you're a good patient, you'll get a lollypop."

"Probably peppermint," Hannibal said sneeringly.

"Oh no," Murdock dug in his jacket and told Hannibal, "For you, Colonel, root beer."

Hannibal got out a strained chuckle and replied, "Thanks, Captain."

Jean turned on her side and turned up her nose, "And knowing my luck it'll probably be bubble gum, bleah."

"Wrong again," Murdock took another one out and told her, "I managed to scrounge up a cream soda one, that _is_ your favorite isn't it?"

Jean eyed him and it suspiciously before taking it and responding, "Yeah, thanks."

Murdock rolled her back onto her back and got her propped up against the pillows and told her, "You stay like that so you can actually eat and I'll bring up both your breakfasts real quick, don't move!" and with that he turned and sped out of the room.

He returned a minute later and Hannibal asked him sarcastically, "What took you so long?"

"I forgot," Murdock produced the morning paper from under his arm and gave it to Hannibal before doubling back out of the room.

Hannibal dug through the paper, took out the comics, turned to Jean, handed them to her and asked her coyly, "Not a bad way to spend a morning, is it?"

Jean grumbled and pulled the covers up and told him, "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

"What?" Hannibal asked as he popped the lid on his pill bottle.

"The attention," Jean said.

Hannibal shrugged like he didn't know what she was talking about but responded, "Not bad for once, wouldn't you agree?"

"Boy you're a real piece of work," Jean said.

"Oh come on," Hannibal replied as he picked up a new cigar and lit it, "Don't you ever long for this? One morning _not_ on the dead run from the word go, with the luxury of staying in bed for breakfast and being waited on?"

"Nope," Jean answered without missing a beat, "Takes me too far back to being sick. I hate being stuck in bed when I have better things to do."

"Yeah, but there's not much you _can_ do currently unless you want to limp around in circles," Hannibal pointed out.

He poured two pills in his hand and held the bottle out to her, "Maybe one of these will take your mind off your foot."

She took the bottle skeptically and asked, "How strong is it?"

"Strong enough to make you whacked out," he answered as he popped two in his mouth, "But you don't feel a thing."

Jean turned her nose up at it but told him, "Why not? I like being whacked out when it's an affordable luxury," and reached for the glass of water on the stand by her side of the bed.

She didn't know how long it took for the pills to kick in but she started to feel _off_ almost right away. It wasn't really anything that she could describe, she just felt weird, and then she felt tired again. Hannibal watched as she fell back against the pillows and didn't move to get up again; she seemed to really be dead to the world. Perfectly suiting, he thought, for what he was about to do. He reached over, slipped an arm under Jean and rolled her over towards him, pressed her against his side and whispered to the unconscious woman, "I love you, kid."

It was almost half an hour before Murdock came back up the stairs and he started to say before he actually got into the bedroom, "Okay, Hannibal, I had to run down to the grocery store and pick up a few things but I forgot, do you like your…"

Hannibal was grinning again, and unconscious, as was Jean, who was also on Hannibal's side of the bed and pinned down against him by one of his strong but 'scrawny' arms. Murdock couldn't help smiling at the sight, but he was able to restrain himself from laughing as he quietly stepped back and pulled the door shut behind him.

* * *

Hannibal could feel Jean rolling around on her side of the bed in her sleep, but he also knew that she was more awake than asleep, and he asked casually, "Everything alright over there?"

She opened her eyes and asked him, "What time is it?"

"About 10."

"In the morning?"

"No, at night."

"How's that possible?" Jean asked.

"We took a couple more pills after dinner," he smirked and asked, "Powerful stuff, eh?"

"I guess," Jean groaned as she rubbed her eyes.

"How's your foot?" he inquired.

"Hurts," she answered as she tried bending her toes, "I'll like it when I can actually walk without staggering like a drunk, then I'll be able to get back home."

"Eh…" Hannibal grimaced, "Sorry, kid, I don't think that's going to be possible for a while."

"How come?" Jean asked.

"Well during a moment of lucidity, we took a vote and decided you'd probably be safer if you stayed here with us for the next few days," Hannibal said, "If it would turn out that anybody's staked out your house…"

"And what if they did _this_ house?" Jean asked.

Hannibal shrugged and answered, "We're all here."

Jean groaned and turned on her side and said to Hannibal, "You know, I wish we were all back at Christmas last year, it was so much easier than now."

"You seem to be forgetting last Christmas the Viet-Cong turned you into a TV dinner," Hannibal reminded her.

"I haven't forgotten," Jean answered, "It was still easier than this now."

"I don't know about that," Hannibal told her, "You didn't see what happened to Murdock when we found you." He chose to leave out the part about what had happened with the _rest_ of them when they found her.

"No but…everything was less complicated back then," she told him, "We were just engaged, we didn't have Stockwell or Fulbright or any of these Generals getting in the way of everything, only Decker who as I recall we were at a truce with for the time…and besides…back then…my uncle was still alive. Not that I guess it mattered much because even when he _was_, I hadn't talked to him for…I don't even know how long…"

"You can't blame yourself for that, Jean," Hannibal said.

"Sure I can, I don't have to be a Catholic to feel guilty about everything," she replied, "Some family, guy goes off to Vietnam, comes back, he withdraws from the world, the only person he ever confided in was me, but that was so long ago…I still don't know what he thought he was doing telling those things to a 10 year old who could barely comprehend them…_now_ when I would've been able to make more sense of it, he dies on me." She flopped her head down on the pillows and added, "I want my old life back...if nothing else, at least back then it was easier to live with myself, I liked better the person I was back then than the one I am now. I'm sure everyone else would be inclined to agree also on that one."

She felt Hannibal's hand on her back but she made no acknowledgement of it. She heard him reply, "It's not the person you were then or the person you are now, it's the circumstances involved with your life that changes all that. Now right now, our lives are very hectic _because_ of the circumstances surrounding us. Once those are out of the way, things will calm down and get nice and boring again and we'll all be on again with our old lives."

"But do you think they will?" Jean asked him.

"Why not?" he returned, "If nothing lasts forever, then that also includes all the crud we go through."

* * *

"How can you say such a thing?" Murdock asked Jean a couple days later when the two of them were seated in the cab of a truck out in the middle of nowhere, awaiting Hannibal's return.

"I can't believe you don't see it," Jean replied.

"_How_ can you say something so spiteful?" he wanted to know.

"Murdock, I am telling you, the Lennon Sisters are _mediocre_."

Murdock gasped like he'd been stabbed in the heart.

"Monotone."

Another death gasp.

"They have _no_ personality," Jean added.

Murdock raised a forearm to his forehead and swayed back in his seat.

"They have _no_ qualities that make any of them stand out from the others," Jean continued.

Murdock gurgled like a dying man on his last breath.

"And they're not that good looking either," Jean topped off, "They're _hardly_ the Andrew Sisters. Now if we were talking _about_ the Andrew Sisters, _then_ we'd be getting somewhere, they had character, they had pizzazz, they had _personality_…"

"_Well_!" Murdock swooned, "I have heard you say some _hateful_ things in your time, but _this_ takes the cake!"

The two continued to squabble amongst themselves and didn't even notice Hannibal had come back until he leaned against the window on Murdock's side and spoke over them, telling them, "One of you move over, I'm coming in."

Murdock scooted over until he was practically on Jean's lap, she was already about as close to the door on her side as possible, Hannibal swung the door open and climbed up in the cab with them.

"No sign of him yet," he said as he slammed the door behind him and wiped the sweat off his forehead, "I wonder what's keeping him?"

Jean stuck her head out the window on her side and said as she looked around, "I hope he didn't get caught."

Hannibal looked past the pilot in the middle and said to Jean, "You know, Jean, you didn't _have_ to come out here with us."

"I feel responsible," she remarked, "He's my friend after all, I knew him before you met the rest of his family."

Hannibal adjusted in his seat to take out his walkie talkie and he said into it, "Any update, Face?"

There was a crackle of static, then the Lieutenant's voice came back, "Still not conscious, bit more brain activity though."

Jean chewed the inside of her top lip as she listened to the update of Stockwell's condition. Putting the General in the hospital _had_ taken him out of the game momentarily and made things a _little_ safer for the A-Team, but it still _wasn't_ what she'd had planned. She felt herself sink lower in her side of the seat as she thought about the situation. The guys didn't seem to hold what she'd done against her, of course it wouldn't do any good now anyway if they had, but she still got the impression there was a whole pile of eggshells under her feet on the matter.

All three of them were knocked out of their thoughts when they felt the truck shake from something hitting it on the driver's side. Hannibal looked out the window and the three of them saw a young Vietnamese man standing alongside the truck in an MP uniform, his face sunburnt and he looked about sick.

"Tommy, what's the word?" Hannibal asked casually.

"Ain't any good ones and I'm about to drop dead from this heat," he answered.

They opened the doors and climbed out of the truck to speak with him.

"What'd you find out?" Hannibal asked.

"I-am-exhausted," Tommy said as he sank down to the rocky ground beneath him, "That guy Fulbright never accomplishes _anything_ but he sure stays plenty busy at the same time."

"Doing what?" Murdock asked.

"Well, I never heard him say one word about his guy Stockwell," Tommy answered, "Instead, every day this guy goes to some ritzy-ditzy country club, plays golf, has the MPs caddy for him."

"What!?" Jean asked, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

"You obviously don't know Bull very well," Hannibal told her, "What else, Tommy?"

"That's about all I can tell you," he said, "That's about all he's been doing since I started tailing him."

"You don't think he's just giving you the runaround, do you?" Hannibal asked, "You don't think he made you?"

"I doubt it," Tommy answered, "If he had I doubt I'd still be standing, I'm sure where this guy's concerned all gooks look alike. As it is I stay in the back where he sees a uniform but not _me_, he don't call on me for anything, I'm just a nameless yes-man to follow him around and watch him make a jackass out of himself on the 9th hole."

"Well I appreciate you helping us," Hannibal said.

"No problem," Tommy shook his head, "Just sorry I couldn't find out more for you than that."

"Sorry to take you away from your work," Jean said.

Tommy snorted, "Ain't missing anything, there's this new special effects guy working, I swear he's gonna blow us all up one of these days. Why the hell they even let him work is beyond me."

"Oh _joy_," Jean murmured into her knuckles.

Once Tommy had left, Jean turned to Hannibal and asked, "What now?"

Hannibal didn't seem fazed by the news, "Just because Fulbright hasn't said anything about Stockwell doesn't mean they're not working together. Stockwell was put in the hospital as a John Doe, Fulbright's not going to know where to find him, so he could very well be biding his time until further notice, he has no way of knowing what happened to the other General."

"So now what?" Murdock asked.

Hannibal seemed to ponder on that question for a minute, then told them, "We've already taken one third of the brains out of this operation, but I still want to know what Dimitri Pedavich's connection to Stockwell is."

"Well he's not talking these days," Jean said, "So how're you going to find that out?"

Murdock's eyes lit up ominously as he turned to Hannibal and said lowly, "Chop-shop, chop-shop."

"Could be," Hannibal nodded hesitantly.

"You're heading back to _that_ place?" Jean asked.

"Yes, might find some answers there," Hannibal said, he turned to her and added, "You on the other hand…"

"Don't worry about me," Jean shook her head, "If I never see that place again it'll be fine with me."

"All the same, are you going to be where we can reach you if we need to?" he asked.

Jean grabbed Hannibal's arm, checked his watch and told him, "I've got to get going, I'm due back at the studio today, you can call me there if you find anything." She pointed in the direction Tommy had gone and said, "I can probably catch him before he gets to his car and ride back with him."

"Good luck," Hannibal said.

"Don't get blown up, darling!" Murdock hollered after her as he waved goodbye.

"Ha-ha," she dryly returned as she walked away from them.

* * *

"So do I even want to know what you guys found, or is this one of those things I'm better off not knowing?" Jean asked when the A-Team tracked her down at the studio late that afternoon.

"In short we didn't come up with much," Hannibal explained as they walked down a long stretch of barren land that was being used for some desert shots. It was a sweltering day and everybody on the set was hot, miserable, tired, and ready to either go home for the day or drop dead, either way it would have to be an improvement. _But_ nobody could go home yet until they finished with the last shoot of the day before they lost the light, more Hollywood jibber jabber that meant nothing to _normal_ people with the brains to get a job in a saner line of work.

"Well nobody breaks out of a Russian prison just to come halfway around the world and sets up shop to dismember somebody unless they plan on sticking around for a while…I'm _guessing_," Jean added when she noticed the odd looks she was getting from Face, "So he had to have come here on _something_."

"Well the first time we were there we didn't take the time to really sweep the place," Hannibal said, "When we went back we found some shorthand notes…in _Russian_, so we had Murdock give them a try, but it _wasn't_ a smooth translation."

Jean looked questioningly to the pilot who said only, "If I read it right, it either said that Pedavich and Stockwell are partners in some kind of business…or it said that chickens give double yolks on Tuesdays."

"Your brain's a _yolk_, Murdock," B.A. growled, "_Fried_ in this heat."

"Tell me about it," Jean said as she wiped at the sweat running down one side of her face, "Let me tell _you_ something, Hannibal. I didn't get this job because the people making it know _any_ of my work. I didn't come recommended from one of their friends or coworkers, and I sure as hell didn't get it for the chance to _evolve_ as an actor. They were _not_ looking for Hamlet on this one, all they wanted was somebody who wouldn't _sweat_ too much in the soldier uniform. And in _this_ weather, that's impossible for _anyone_. So I guess it's back to square one on what connection Stockwell has with this potato Pedavich."

"Not quite," Hannibal told her, "We _did_ manage to find the remains of some notes and as far as we could put it together, it seems that the not so good General has been an avid business partner in Mr. Pedavich's human import/export business."

Jean looked at him completely dumbstruck for a minute, then she said, "That's why when he flies out of the country he takes a jet that can hold 100 people on it."

"Could be," Hannibal slowly nodded, "Problem is there's no telling how long it's been going on or how far out it's spread."

"It still doesn't answer why he'd work with Pedavich though," Jean said.

"The answer's in the question," Face said, "It's a _business_, it's a very successful one, even illegal ones can turn a big profit."

"_Especially_ illegal ones," Murdock corrected.

"And when business does well, it's not hard to find willing partners," Face added.

"And if said partners can come and go from country to country because of the power involved with their military standing and they can have a hundred willing men at their beck and call and access to anything within the United States Army at his disposal from weapons to transportation," Jean said as she shook her head, "How many generals you think are turning an additional salary this way?"

Wanting to change the subject, Face looked at Jean and noticed, wanting to smack himself in the head for not noticing before, that she was dressed in a thin T-shirt and thin jeans.

"If you've been here shooting all day," he asked, "How come you're not in your MP uniform?"

Jean raised her forearm to her forehead to blot out the sun as she looked at him and explained, "I've already sweated through five of them, and believe it or not they have only so many suits in my size, the wardrobe department's having a field day with this one. Besides, we're not ready to shoot _here_ yet, that dumb special effects guy is still getting everything set up."

"What exactly is he doing?" Face asked as he looked around and failed to see anything besides dirt and sand as far as the eye could see.

"He's setting up some…"

The explosion that came out of nowhere, and went off only a couple feet from where Hannibal stood, finished the explanation for Jean. Everybody was scared out of their minds by the sudden explosion and looking around to see what had happened. Hannibal found himself crouched down and felt his knees turned to jelly, and he was momentarily trying to figure out if he still had any hearing in his right ear when another explosion went off and shook the ground underneath all of them. The flames from the explosion climbed high like a tornado touching down and the black smoke billowed above like a heavy anvil cloud. He turned and saw the others were also more or less on the ground, whether knocked down by the impact or thrown down by sheer bodily response to an imminent threat, who knew? Jean somehow was still on her feet, but not by much, she stood close to the special effects-produced freak fire tornado and the flames started to swoop to one side towards her.

"Jean look out!" Hannibal hollered before he even realized he was charging for her and pushed her down, hopefully out of the way, and covered her with his own body.

Several more charges blew and the noise was deafeningly repetitive, it sounded like the grand finale at the 4th of July, no sky displays though, only the large, earth shaking, blood curdling BOOMS that sounded like the world was about to swallow everything up. Nobody knew _what_ was going on but the other members of the A-Team had responded as if a grenade was going off; they'd thrown themselves flat on the ground, kept their legs tight together and covered their heads with their arms. Until the explosions stopped there didn't seem to be anything to do but wait it out and hope they didn't get hit since there was no way to tell where the next one would come from. B.A. had his eyes tight shut to keep out the flying dirt, Face kept one eye open a slit so he could look around and try to make sense of what was happening. Over to his left, Murdock was in the same position they were, but the conman was able to see Murdock was trembling on the ground and he would've sworn even over the ear-shattering explosions, that he could hear the pilot whimpering in response to the sudden attack.

Finally, the noises stopped and everybody realized it was as safe now to get up as it was going to get. Slowly, one by one they opened their eyes and saw the surrounding area was now chock full of growing fires and black smoke clouds filling the sky and it _did_ look like a warzone. Face and B.A. were the first ones up, Face looked to Murdock and saw the pilot was still flat on the ground and made no show of getting up. They went over to him and Face put a hand on the pilot's shoulder to get his attention, now that they were this close to him, they could hear the muffled sobs that pilot was making against the ground.

"Murdock, are you alright?" Face asked as B.A. helped him turn Murdock on his side to check for any damage.

Murdock wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and opened them to look at Face and said shakily, "I'm okay, Face…"

Murdock wasn't very steady getting to his feet so Face grabbed him and pulled Murdock against him in a strong hug to keep the pilot upright and to let him know they were alright.

"You okay, B.A.?" Face asked as he looked to the Sergeant.

B.A. merely nodded and grunted as he knocked the dirt and sand off of the front of his clothes.

Hannibal felt weak and dizzy, opening his eyes was difficult the first couple of tries and he wondered if he'd actually lost consciousness for a moment. He felt groggy and everything seemed to be moving slowly as he tried to figure out what was going on.

Jean was also coming out of the shock she'd been knocked into during the explosions, and little by little everything started to come back to her. Her eyes popped open wide when she felt herself pinned to the ground and felt something at her back, she turned her head since it was all she could move at the moment and angrily screamed at Hannibal, "Get off me!"

Hannibal was also coming back to reality bit by bit. Once Jean's words started to make sense to him, he self consciously rolled onto his side, and at her side and said sheepishly, "Sorry, kid."

"Hannibal, you' alright?" B.A. asked as the others came over to them.

"I….think so…" Hannibal weakly answered as he got to his feet.

Murdock moved over to Jean and threw his arms around her and asked her the same question.

"I'm alright," she answered quietly.

"What _was_ that?" Face demanded to know, "What the _hell_ happened?"

That's what everybody wanted to know. Looking back the way they had come, they saw someone coming over the hillside and down towards them. Hannibal recognized him as the special effects man in question, Frankie Santana, young guy, worked on a few other movies for their studio, and he looked about as surprised as they did.

"YOU!" Jean roared as she broke away from Murdock and ran towards the man

It took Frankie a couple seconds to figure out that he was in danger and when it hit him he turned around and ran, but Jean was right behind him.

"Well now we know what Tommy was talking about," Hannibal said, "Come on, we better catch her before she kills him."

"Not that you'd get any complaints from _me_ if she did," Face replied as they took off running.

It didn't take them long to catch up, and when they did, nobody could really believe what they saw. Jean had caught Frankie and tackled him to the ground and something seemed to have gone off inside of her because she was yelling at the top of her lungs, using every word in the book as she mercilessly pummeled the special effects man, including kicking him in the ribs, punching him in the face, and grabbing him by his hair and jerking his head up and then slamming it against the ground, over and over and over. She was so engrossed in trying to murder the man underneath her, she hardly noticed B.A. and Hannibal trying to pull her off of him, until they actually succeeded, then she tried to get away from them and get back to pulverizing Frankie.

"Jean! Calm _down_!" Hannibal screamed at Jean as he pinned her arms down and restrained her.

"DON'T TELL ME TO CALM DOWN, HE NEARLY GOT ALL OF US KILLED!" Jean yelled louder than they'd ever heard her before, she looked at Hannibal and said, as if he needed reminding, "HE ALMOST GOT YOU KILLED, HE ALMOST GOT THEM KILLED," she pointed to the others, "HE ABOUT GOT US ALL KILLED WITH HIS STUPID EXPLOSIVES!"

And now they had company. All the crew members for the movie had come up to see what was going on, and now everyone could see Jean's handiwork all over the now bloody special effects man on the ground. From there, it became a circus, paramedics were brought in who put Frankie on a stretcher and moved him into the back of an ambulance, and everybody was standing around murmuring to one another.

"This is just going to be terrific," Face said, "You know what they're going to do?"

"I know, I know," Hannibal said quietly, he turned to the others and said, "Take Jean back to my trailer, I'll be back."

Hannibal made his way through the crowd and managed to find the director for the movie, a director Hannibal had worked for a few times previously as well. The director had a cordless phone with him and was in the process of dialing it when Hannibal came up to him and said, "You wouldn't happen to be calling the police, would you, Sy?"

"What would you have me do, John?" he asked as he hit the disconnect button, "One of my stuntmen just about murdered my special effects man."

"And your special effects man just about killed _me_, and _her_, and all of our friends," Hannibal said, "Because his charges blew prematurely, from the looks of it I'd say about an hour prematurely, I don't have to tell you how bad that looks." The director opened his mouth but Hannibal cut him off, "And it wouldn't make good press once that story hit the newspapers either. Do you happen to know who the biggest fan base for the Aquamaniac movies is? Children, little, impressionable, emotional, vulnerable children, they beg their parents to take them to the new Aquamaniac movies each summer, they get their pictures taken with him during the studio tours all the time." Hannibal decided to milk his acting abilities for all they were worth as he carried on and told the director, "And they get smarter all the time, they're reading the newspapers earlier and earlier, and what do you think would happen when all the children in Los Angeles read about how the Aquamaniac was killed during a mistimed explosion?" he shook his head, "Wouldn't be pretty."

"I'm not unsympathetic, John, but did you _see_ what she did to my best special effects man?"

"_That_," Hannibal said, ignoring the sweat that was just about to run into his eyes, "Is not unreasonable. Sy, are you aware that more murders occur at 98 degrees than any other temperature?"

"I _know_ that, John, but…"

"It is _now_," Hannibal told him as he huffed and puffed from the heat, "110 degrees out here, with heat index it's likely closer to 120…" he snorted and said, "Any hotter and you'd have to wrap your cameras and your film in ice like in von Stroheim's time." He pushed that to the side and added, "Do you know _why_ more murders are committed at 98 degrees than any other temperature? Because so many more parts of the country see 98 degrees than any other high. I assure you very few places in America are seeing the highs we're having here right now. But don't think that means anything here and now, just because more murders are committed at 98 degrees does _not_ mean that 110 doesn't have its own fair share and you can be _very_ sure that the ones committed at 110 are far worse given how maddening this excessive heat is."

It took a while of dancing around on the subjects but Hannibal managed to get the director to see things his way and when he was satisfied that Sy wasn't going to call the police to report the assault, he went back to his trailer. But along the way he saw that the ambulance was still on the lot, and he poked his head in and asked the paramedics, "Is he stabilized enough I can talk to him for a minute?"

The paramedics didn't try to argue against it, so Hannibal took that as a good sign and he stepped into the ambulance and got a better look at the job Jean had done to Frankie.

"How're you feeling, kid?" he asked.

Frankie tried to talk, but the first couple tries were just a series of choked coughs. When he _was_ able to speak, he asked Hannibal, "What happened, Johnny?"

Hannibal felt his shoulders tighten and draw up and his teeth start to gnash together slightly at being called 'Johnny', something that nobody had called him, nor had a _right_ to call him since his childhood in Hollywood. But he was willing to let it go and he merely replied to the young man, "Hard to say, I was hoping you could tell me."

"Johnny," the special effects man groaned, "I didn't mean for everything to go off early, I don't know what happened."

"Oh…I know that, Frankie," Hannibal replied, "Still, I can't help wondering _what_ went wrong?"

Frankie tilted his head back and looked at Hannibal through a half swollen shut eye and asked, "Johnny, _what_ was that back there?" and Hannibal knew he was referring to Jean.

Hannibal merely shrugged and helplessly replied, "Hard to say, kid, I think it's a girl thing."

It took a great deal of self restraint not to laugh at Frankie's groaning that followed Hannibal's statement. He stepped out of the ambulance and let the paramedics get back to their job, _then_ he went back to his trailer, where Face and B.A. were standing outside waiting on him.

"Well?" Face asked.

"It's alright, I talked Sy out of pressing charges," Hannibal said, "Where's Jean? And for that matter, where's Murdock?"

"Inside," Face nodded his head to the trailer, "Waiting on _you_."


	5. Chapter 5

The sight that greeted Hannibal wasn't one he was expecting; Murdock and Jean were about as far apart from each other as was possible in the trailer, and whereas Murdock merely looked slightly perplexed by what had happened, Jean looked like she was going to be sick. Hannibal wasn't exactly sure what was going on but he decided to get the first thing squared away before he tried on the next one.

"It's okay, Jean, I talked to the director and made him see things our way, he _won't_ be calling the police about this."

That made her look _slightly_ better, but not by much. Hannibal didn't get it, he looked from Jean, over to Murdock, and back and forth again, and both of them were acting like they didn't even know each other.

"Alright, now listen," he alternated who he looked at as he spoke so he was addressing them both, "After what happened out there, any further filming for the day is history. We're all hot and miserable, let's just get out of here and go somewhere that's air conditioned, alright?"

Slowly the two of them seemed to come around and they slowly nodded and murmured something in agreement.

"Alright," Hannibal said, "Murdock, why don't you go with Face and B.A. in the van, and _I_'ll take Jean and we'll take Face's 'Vette."

"How come?" Murdock thought to asked as he stood up.

"Because I like it," Hannibal replied with a knowing smirk.

Murdock nodded and walked out of the trailer, Hannibal went over to where Jean was seated and asked her, "You alright, kid?"

She shook her head, "I don't know…I don't know anything anymore." As if just realizing he was in the room with her, she looked up at him and said, "Hannibal, I'm sorry."

"No you're not," Hannibal replied, "But it's alright. Come on, get up."

Shakily, she got to her feet and said, "I don't know what happened…I just wanted to kill him."

"It's okay," Hannibal could tell she wasn't going to get far alone and helped keep her balanced as they headed to the door. He also made a mental note that sometime before they got home, they should probably stop off somewhere Jean could use the restroom and get cleaned up; her face was tattooed by a raccoon mask around her eyes of dust and dirt from when everything started blowing up, and he hadn't missed the small places where the mask streaked and started to trail down her face.

"I know I broke some of his ribs, I busted his nose…I don't know why I did it," she said.

"It's alright," Hannibal told her, "We know you didn't mean to."

Just as they were stepping out of his trailer, Face was coming up to them and he said to Hannibal, "Hannibal, what's this about you two taking my 'Vette and sticking me with B.A. and his van?"

"I think I'm going to throw up," Jean told Hannibal.

Face's eyes widened and he told Hannibal, "You're _not_ taking her in _my_ car."

Hannibal rolled his eyes and stopped so Jean stopped and he started to push her down and told her, "Alright kid, let's take a breather for a minute, just sit down and take it easy." Then he grabbed Face by the elbow and walked him off to the side and said lowly, "May I see you for a minute, Lieutenant?"

"Hannibal, _what_ is going on?" Face asked.

"I don't know," Hannibal shook his head, "But somehow I get the feeling it's in these two's best interests if we get them _away_ from each other for a while. Don't take Murdock home though."

"Why not?" Face asked, "Where am I _supposed_ to take him?"

"Someplace public and 'healthily air conditioned', where he can relax but he'll also keep himself in check," Hannibal said, "There's a bowling alley not far from here…"

"I know that, Hannibal, and don't think I _don't_ know they also have an _arcade_ there," Face said.

"Alright, so take him there," Hannibal said, "You take Murdock there and I'll take Jean to a bar where she can unwind, when _we_ get settled there, I'll call _you_ and you can fill me in on how Murdock's doing by then."

"I don't get it," Face said.

"It's been a hell of a day, everybody needs to cool off and calm down before we go home and it becomes five of us together in an enclosed space again," Hannibal said, and that was about all he was willing to say on the subject.

Face didn't get it and he didn't like it but he agreed to go along with it, so he went to get Murdock and Hannibal went back to Jean and helped her up and over to Face's corvette and they took off and left the movie lot and the destruction that had ensued there in their dust.

* * *

Once they'd reached the bar, once they'd gotten in to the air conditioning and Jean had been able to clean up a little and Hannibal was able to get a couple drinks in her, then things started to look up for them. But there was still stuff going on that Hannibal wasn't sure what to make heads or tails of. And it wasn't just here and now, he'd thought back to the past few days and it seemed to be a steady pattern.

Once Jean's ankle was better and she was able to walk around without looking like a staggering drunk, she'd insisted that she couldn't stand being in bed another minute, because she'd already spent about three days in bed with Hannibal, so when night came, she'd disappeared off to somewhere else in the house. That was the last Hannibal had known about the subject, until he was woken up at 2 that morning by a loud crashing noise and people screaming. It turned out that Jean had gone to sleep on the floor out in the hallway on the second floor, and this was unbeknownst to everyone else, and as an end result, both Face and B.A. had tripped over her and fallen down the stairs.

The first night that this had happened, Hannibal hadn't thought much of it. But as the nights passed, _then_ he noticed the pattern. When everybody turned in for the night, Jean wouldn't go to Murdock's room, and he wouldn't come to her; she alternated the nights between sleeping on the floor somewhere or on the couch down in the living room. He didn't get it. What more, they never said anything about it to him or anyone else, and they seldom talked to each other either. None of it made any sense, it was as if these two were afraid to be near each other anymore.

And today? After the bombs had all gone off, Murdock had rushed over to Jean to make sure she was alright, but then when he came back, they had separated themselves as much as they could given the limited spacing of his trailer. Something was going on, something had happened, but he didn't know what and he also knew neither side was going to tell _him_ what it was.

An idea came to Hannibal and while he got Jean started on her third drink of the evening, he went over to the phone and called the bowling alley and had whoever answered find Face and get him on the phone. There was a great commotion in the background, the constant sound of pins falling, people talking and screaming, a TV somewhere in the midst of it, and if Hannibal listened carefully enough he'd swear he could hear the sound effects of some of the arcade games too, or maybe that was just Murdock doing his own impression of the sound effects.

"How's it going there, Face?" he asked.

"How's it _sound_ like it's going?" Face asked.

"Well how's Murdock doing?"

"Hard to say," Face replied, "He's gone through about every game in the arcade and he's knocked back several beers already."

An idea occurred to Hannibal, and he _should_ have been ashamed of himself for even thinking it up, but as usual he wasn't. "Face, you know Murdock about as well as any of us…how much does it take to get him tipsy?"

"Hannibal," Face's voice was stern over the telephone, "_What_ is going through your evil mind right about now?"

"Not much," he replied so Face could _hear_ his grin, "Keep an eye on Murdock but make sure he helps himself to a few more drinks before you get him home."

"How come?" Face wanted to know.

"You'll see when I get there," Hannibal told him. A few more words, and he hung up and went back to the bar. Jean had her arms folded on the counter and was about asleep.

"Hey Jean," he kicked her barstool to wake her up, "How bout another drink?"

"I a'ready had three of them," she slurred.

"What're you talking about?" Hannibal asked, "You only had _two_."

"I did?" she asked as she picked her head up and looked at him, "I would'a swore it was three."

"No, it's going to _be_ three," he said, and he called to the bartender for another drink, and ordered something hard for himself as well.

When the drinks came, Hannibal pretended to drink his when Jean took a drink of hers, but instead he waited until she'd drunk some of hers and wasn't watching, and he poured some of his vodka and rum into her Manhattan. He kept an eye on her as she drank, and also an eye on the time, and to pass the time he tried making small talk with her, but it wasn't a subject she was currently well versed in. Though at sometime during their stay and sometime during her 5th drink, Jean looked to him and slurred, "You know, Hannibal…'f I didn't know any better, I'd swear you was trying to get me drunk and take advantage of me."

"Aw shucks, you figured it out," he replied mockingly with a coy look on his face.

During the drinks he'd also tried to get Jean to talk about Murdock, and explain what was going on, but even knee-high drunk she knew enough to keep her mouth closed on that particular subject. And when it started to get dark outside, he decided they'd both had enough. He paid the tab and by this time, Jean was in _no_ shape to walk, so he helped her out to the car, then helped her _into_ the car, and then headed for the house.

By the time they got home, Jean wasn't in any condition to even stand up, so Hannibal carried her into the house and then up the stairs to the second floor. Face was up there waiting for him, and he did a double take when he saw them coming.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Nothing," Hannibal insisted, "Is Murdock in his room?"

"Yeah, why?" Face asked.

"Just get the door and then get back," Hannibal told him as he carried Jean down the hall.

Face ran on ahead and got the door open, Hannibal walked into the dark room and saw Murdock wriggling around on the bed, bobbing his head and humming something to himself in the state of half-sleep he seemed to be in. Hannibal laid Jean down on the other side of the bed and pulled the sheet up over the two of them and then backed out of the room and pulled the door shut behind him.

"Hannibal," Face said again, "You mind telling me _what_ is going on here?"

"It's a very simple process, Face," Hannibal explained, "We got these two drunk out of their skulls, now we're going to put them together for the night and let nature take its course."

The look on Templeton's face when he heard that was nothing short of priceless _or_ hysterical, "What!?"

Hannibal was unfazed by his Lieutenant's little outburst and told him as they walked away from the door, "I don't know _what's_ been going on here, but those two have been avoiding each other like the plague. So I say we take away their choice to do that, at least for the night anyway."

"Uh huh," Face said dryly, "And what do you think _this_ is going to accomplish?"

"Maybe nothing," Hannibal shrugged, "But a little booze never hurt a relationship, hell I'm convinced that's the only thing that saved my parents' marriage on _several_ occasions."

"Very nice," Face dryly remarked, looking a little sick at the visual aids that sprang forth from that statement, "And you really think this is a good idea?"

"What's the worst that could happen?" Hannibal asked.

Face stopped in his tracks at that question and as Hannibal passed him, Face replied, "You show a stunning lack of imagination here, Hannibal. You know that, don't you?"

* * *

Murdock didn't know if he was in a dream or not, he knew that he wasn't quite awake yet, and the other thing that he _did_ know currently was that he felt content. He felt something soft pressing against his stomach and felt his arm stretched out to the side and felt something soft under his hand as he subconsciously moved it back and forth. He finally managed to open his eyes and when he did he realized that he was in bed in his room at the house, and he saw that he'd gotten his hand tangled up in Jean's hair, and she was still asleep. His memory from the night before was more than a little fuzzy, but he had a good feeling about whatever had happened, a small, mischievous smirk on his face, he leaned over and kissed Jean, she still didn't wake up. Persistent, Murdock scooted over to her side the bed and nuzzled against her like a cat.

Jean was slowly coming around to the side of consciousness and there was one spot on her head that was killing her. She felt something pressed against her and opened her eyes and saw Murdock was sardined against her with an 'I'm a bad little boy' smirk on his face.

"What time is it?" she asked as she tried to get her hands up to rub her eyes.

Murdock didn't even know, nor did he care.

"Good morning, darling," he said as he kissed her again.

Jean made a tired 'hmm' sound as she closed her eyes again and pushed her body up from the mattress and moved slightly to get more comfortable against it. The next thing she knew, she felt two arms choking the air out of her as Murdock hugged her.

"I love you, darling," he told her.

Jean tried to return the sentiment but she couldn't get the words up. Instead she rested where she was for a minute before opening her eyes again and saying, "Somehow I have the sneaking suspicion a certain gray haired old man is behind this."

Murdock just chuckled and nuzzled even closer against her.

"What even _happened_ last night?" Jean asked him.

"I don't know," Murdock replied, "But I like it."

Jean smiled weakly and added, "Me too."

Murdock managed to get a small jerked sound out of her when he squeezed her even tighter against him, he pinned her under him and murmured into her ear, "I love you."

"I love you too, Murdock," she replied.

* * *

That day when Jean returned to the studio to work, people were _still_ trying to clear up the mess from Frankie's charges going off prematurely the day before, so she jumped ship from one project to another and was surprised to find out she was being teamed up with Tommy Trang for a motorcycle stunt segment. As they got ready for filming to begin, they got caught up on what was going on with Fulbright and Stockwell.

"Face keeps checking in at the hospital to make sure he's not conscious yet," Jean said, "The minute he is, _somebody_ needs to be there to know it."

"Already on that," Tommy replied, "You know that nice little janitorial cover we pretty much perfected at the Federal Building? Turns out it works in hospitals too."

"You?"

"Nope, my sister and the rest of my idiot brothers," he replied, "Believe me, the minute this guy blinks, we're going to know it. Then the question just becomes _then_ what?"

"That's the part I haven't figured out yet," Jean told him, "And I don't think Hannibal has either. We really _don't_ know what we're dealing with here."

"But you said he _was_ in cahoots with this Russian butcher guy, right?" Tommy asked as they walked out to where the motorcycle had been prepared for the scene they were going to shoot.

"Seems so," she replied, "So then it just becomes a matter of how far in it is he with these people? Not that it matters much anymore because Pedavich is a permanent potato now."

"Ha," Tommy laughed, "Bit of irony there, isn't it? And maybe in 20 years he can ferment into a couple gallons of vodka."

They heard somebody call to them and turned around to see Murdock running up to them.

"Murdock, what're you doing here?" Jean asked.

Now that he'd actually come up to them he seemed to be momentarily at a loss to explain, then he answered, "I just thought I'd come down and see how you were doing. I…"

"You were _checking_ on me?" she asked.

"…Yeah," he nodded.

Jean shook her head and had a 'what am I going to do with you?' look on her face, then it fell away as she leaned in to hug him and told him, "Thank you."

He patted her on the back and asked Tommy, "How you guys doing?"

"Just getting ready," he answered.

"I see," Murdock responded, "Uh…what exactly _are_ you doing?"

"Nothing _too_ dangerous," Tommy assured him, "We're just doing some basic riding by shots because the actors who are supposed to be doing this can't even switch gears without wiping out."

"Uh huh," he didn't sound too convinced but he told Jean, "Good luck, hon, I'll see you later."

"Bye," Jean waved him off.

"I tell you," Tommy said as he turned to Jean, "I remember when an actor had to lie and say they could do everything, and then when they found out what they had to do that they couldn't…"

"They ran right out and signed up for lessons," Jean finished for him, "Instead, today they hire _us_ to do what _they_ can't."

"But _they_ get the bigger paychecks and _their_ names up front for the lesser work," Tommy added.

"That's our lot in life," she agreed.

"Oh well," he huffed as he climbed on the motorcycle, "Let's get this over with."

Jean straddled it behind him and grabbed him around his waist so neither of them went spilling off as Tommy started the bike up and went around a couple times to get into the motion before they got ready to start filming for the day.

* * *

That night at the house, it was just the four guys talking amongst themselves when the phone rang, and Murdock ran to get it.

"Hello?" he said into the receiver. His eyes lit up momentarily but then his emotions seemed to drop as he called into the kitchen, "Hannibal, phone for you."

"I don't know anybody," Hannibal said as he walked out, "Who is it?"

Murdock held the receiver to him and answered, "Jean, she says she's gotta talk to you."

Hannibal reluctantly took the receiver and said into it, "Hello?"

"Hannibal, can you guys come back to the studio?" Jean asked.

Hannibal checked his watch and saw it was going on 9 o' clock, "What're you still doing there? You should've been back hours ago."

The next thing he heard from Jean was so loud and so frantic he had to hold the receiver away from his ear. Then slowly he put it to his ear again and said into it, "You want to try that again, Jean? A little _slower_ this time."

"I put a man in the hospital for nothing," Jean said, "I think I know what happened with the explosives yesterday. I need you to get down here because I think…"

Jean was cut off and the next thing Hannibal heard was a garbled scream he could identify as Jean, and it sounded like she was in trouble.

"Jean? Hello!" there was nothing.

"What happened?" Face asked as Hannibal hung up the phone.

Hannibal looked to his men and shook his head grimly and said, "I don't know, but we need to get back to the studio, and fast."

* * *

The film studio was closed up for the night by the time they arrived and there didn't seem to be anybody around. They made their way around to the back lots and called for Jean as they shone their lights all around the place, but there was no response.

"Jean, come on out, this isn't funny!" Hannibal called as he shone a flashlight into a thicket of trees and aimed up to see if she was hiding in the branches.

"Jean?" Face called as he walked around a large piece of ground with unmistakable motorcycle tire tracks all around it, no doubt the scene of the day's stunt segment.

"Jean!" Murdock called as he wandered around a vacant piece of ground used for the 'barren wasteland' shots.

Everybody had gone off in a different direction and on occasion got in touch with the others for a status report, and all came back negative. Murdock had wandered further off from the rest, and B.A., Face and Hannibal had all inadvertently wandered back towards each other. Hannibal shone his light over by a truck that had been left on the lot, and he saw something more than just a truck. He didn't go for his walkie talkie, instead he relied on sheer lung power and called out, "Face! B.A.!"

They heard Hannibal calling and followed the sound to see what he'd found; in no time at all they'd caught up with one another and followed Hannibal over towards the truck. The first thing they found laying on the ground was a torn soldier green jacket, and the next thing they found was a shredded pair of soldier green fatigues, and just beyond that they found Jean laying on the ground in only her underwear. She was on her side and looked like she'd tried to curl up into a ball but only managed to get halfway to that position. Though it was August and burning hot, she had her arms weakly pressed against her body as if she was freezing. Her eyes were closed, her mouth was open to let air in and the soft groans she was making _out_. She was conscious, but barely.

"Oh my God," Face felt sick when he saw her, "Is she alright?"

Hannibal shone his light on her as he looked her up and down and concluded, "She's not bleeding, that's a small improvement." If she was bruised anywhere would be another matter, Hannibal turned her over to examine her better, she groaned slightly louder but otherwise she didn't respond. Hannibal's nose picked up on a familiar strong scent emanating from her exhales and it about choked him.

"Whiskey," he said, and shining his light around again, he noticed a couple of broken bottles near the truck. "Whoever it was poured some of it down her throat."

"Uh, Hannibal," Face said uncomfortably, "Can we…" he gestured towards Jean hoping Hannibal would pick up on the hint, "You know, _before_ Murdock finds us?"

"Right," Hannibal shrugged off his safari jacket and wrapped it around Jean and tried to get the buttons done up when he realized the jacket came up a little short on her and he couldn't help commenting, "You just _had_ to be long-bodied, didn't you, kid?"

Face turned to B.A. and an idea came to him, "Uh, B.A., do you mind?"

It took a few seconds for B.A. to figure out what Face meant, then when it hit him he agreed, "Right," and undid the straps on his overalls to get his shirt off. Face took it over to Hannibal and helped him get Jean into it, _that_ was better, at least it came halfway down her thighs. Hannibal buttoned his jacket up on Jean again and then grabbed his belt, removed it single-handedly and tied it around Jean's waist so the jacket fit her better and stayed shut.

"B.A.," Hannibal said, "Get her back to the van and keep an eye on her, we're going to find Murdock."

"Right, Hannibal," B.A. stepped around them and picked Jean up and headed back the way they came.

Hannibal got on his radio and asked, "Murdock, _where_ are you?"

The pilot came back and responded, "I'm on the lot where the charges went off, Hannibal, I figured she might be around here since this is why she wanted us out here."

"She's not there, Murdock," Hannibal told him, "We found her, B.A.'s got her back at the van. You better get on back to us."

"Is she alright?" Murdock asked.

"Just get back here, Murdock," Hannibal said.

"Hannibal!" Murdock was screaming at him over the walkie talkie, "_Why_ did this happen? _Who_ did this?"

It was a good question. Hannibal turned his flashlight back on and shone it against the ground, over by the front bumper of the truck were the boots that went with Jean's soldier costume. Hannibal picked up one of the boots and examined the bottom of it, and compared it with the tracks made in the dirt.

"Murdock," Hannibal said into his radio, "I think I know who did it."

* * *

B.A. got Jean settled in the back of the van and dug up the red plaid blanket Murdock always kept in it and wrapped Jean in it so at least the bottom half of her was covered up. He had her lean against him so her upper body was upright incase she'd suffered a head injury. She wasn't black and blue all over this time like any other time she got beat up but that didn't mean anything either. She hadn't woken up yet and except for an occasional groan and a small turn one way or the other, she didn't move at all.

This was familiar. It was debated if everybody at some point in their life experienced a feeling of déjà vu, some people had several such experiences. Maybe if you were in a position like they all had been in the Army, it was more likely to happen. But right about now, B.A. had a grim feeling eating at him, this was familiar somehow. He remembered, the one time he was actually _conscious_ during a helicopter ride, when they were airlifting Jean to the hospital after she'd been shot. When that had happened they'd kept her upright and leaning against B.A. to keep her calm, just like now, except now she was unconscious and didn't know what was going on around her. B.A. wondered if she'd even be able to tell them who did this to her, or if she'd even know when she woke up?

After a few minutes, her breathing started to get heavier and she tried to open her eyes.

"Take it easy, mama," he told her as she moved against him, "I got ya."

Jean opened and closed her eyes a few times before getting them to stay open, and she tilted her head back to look up at him. B.A. was worried that something was wrong when he saw the ridiculous grin on Jean's face.

"Of _course_ you do, B.A.," she replied giddily, laughing a little, "You' _always_ been there for me when I needed you." She leaned further back against him and recalled goofily, "You was there for me when I was shot and we flew to the hospital, and you was there the _whole_ time I was in surgery, and then you was there that whole night _after_ the surgery. And you was there for me when we had to rush Hannibal to the hospital and we were worried he was going to die. And _then_ you was there for me when my uncle died. You' _always_ been there when I needed ya, my _great big_ protector. Is' no wonder Murdock looks up to you like he does, he pra-tically worships you, an' I can see why, you' a good guy, a re-e-al good guy."

B.A. didn't know if she was just drunk, or delusional, or if this was the result of some internal injury shining through. "Just take it easy, mama, and try to rest. Do you know who did this to you?"

Jean got out a single, sharp laugh and replied, "Oh yeah, I know…I know-I know-I know…" she rubbed her elbow and looked straight ahead and told him, "Treachery, mutiny…my _own_ men did this to me."

* * *

"The pattern of the boot prints on the ground match the ones Jean was wearing, but they're too big to be hers," Hannibal said, "Now there's only _one_ kind of person that's going to be wearing army boots on a movie lot."

"Actors," Murdock said.

"No no," Hannibal shook his head, "Stuntmen. Remember in all actuality we see more of them in uniform _than_ the actors, therefore _their_ outfits have to be perfect in every detail just _like_ the actors. An actor you can do close ups, a _lot_ of close ups during their big dramatic monologues and dialogues, so you don't have to worry about seeing their feet, but _stuntmen_ are in all the fight scenes, you see them running, jumping, kicking, you see them in combat with one another, they _have_ to be perfect in details."

"The stuntmen did this to Jean, why?" Face asked.

"Because she works as a stunt_man_, not a stuntwoman, she does stunts for _men_, and she does a _lot_ of them, which probably means she's stepped on a few toes to get those jobs, and the men resent it _and_ her and wanted to teach her a lesson. They stripped her of her uniform, to drive home the reminder she's _not_ one of the men, in fact they left her laying out here in such a way to point out plain as day just _what_ she is. They stripped her, dragged her, pinned her down, poured some booze down her throat, and then knocked her around a little and left her bordering on unconsciousness. In less modern times that could all be seen as putting a woman in her place, a lot of it was very common in married households on a semi-regular basis."

"And people think we're sexist _today_," Face commented.

"And you think they were the ones who rigged the explosives the other day?" Murdock asked.

Hannibal shrugged, "They _knew_ Jean was working on that set as a stuntman, it would've been the perfect opportunity to get her out of the picture, but when that didn't work, and she came back, they resorted to _this_ instead. And…" Hannibal pointed and showed that the boot prints only went so far before they came to an end, and were replaced by tire tracks.

"Looks like a jeep," Face said, "The same kind probably that they were using for the movie being shot here."

"Trail's probably cold by now," Hannibal told them, "But we'll check it out."

"Why," Face pointed a thumb towards the truck, "Why do you think they left that here?"

"Might be bombed," Murdock thought.

"We'll check it out," Hannibal said, "And if not, we're going to use it to follow these tracks and find out where those snakes slithered off to."

A quick but thorough exam of the truck turned up nothing suspicious, though once Face hotwired it, he told Hannibal, "I know why they left it, it's about out of gas."

"No matter, it'll get us where we want to go," Hannibal replied.

* * *

A couple sharp breaths caught in Jean's throat and she swallowed heavily, her eyes were barely open anymore.

"What' they do to you, mama?" B.A. asked as he kept a hold on her and kept her leaning against him for support.

Jean forced her eyes open and said dryly, "Oh you're a smart guy, I'm sure you can figure it out." She groaned as she tried moving a little to get more comfortable, "I wish the others would get back here soon, I want to go home."

"Just hang in there, mama, you gonna be alright, cuz you' tough like me," and he gave a small grunting growl as if to prove his point.

Jean got out a weak laugh but other than that didn't respond much. A few minutes later they could hear somebody approaching the van, B.A. laid Jean down and reached for the back door and threw it open to see what was going on.

"Well we can go home now," Hannibal announced as he came up to them, "Is she alright?"

"You find them, Hannibal?" B.A. inquired.

"Yeah, we found them," Hannibal replied, and they're going to regret that for the rest of their lives." He crouched down to make eye contact with Jean, and he shook his head and told her, "I swear, you get in _more_ trouble…"

He followed Jean's gaze that didn't look at him, and instead focused towards her outstretched feet. Hannibal sighed dismissively and told her, "It's over now, that's what matters, now we can get out of here and go home."

B.A. got out of the back and went around to the driver's side and everybody else piled into the van, though it didn't go unnoticed that instead of getting in the back with Jean, Murdock went around to the front for the ride home. Face and Hannibal looked to each other and couldn't figure it out.

* * *

When they got back to the house, Jean had gotten cleaned up and changed into a set of Murdock's pajamas and crawled into his bed and lay in the dark for she didn't know how long, waiting, and finally she heard the door open and turned to see who came in.

"Let me guess, you want some company for the night?" Hannibal asked as he stood by the side of the bed, and he didn't miss the confused look on Jean's face when she saw him.

Jean shrugged dismissively, as Hannibal pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed and crawled in, Jean moved closer towards the edge and asked, "Where's Murdock?"

"He," Hannibal said slowly as he pulled the covers up, "Went out a little while ago."

"Well when's he coming back?" Jean asked, and she noticed the uneasy look on Hannibal's face and she concluded, "He _isn't_ coming back, is he?"

"Of course he will…just maybe not tonight," Hannibal said.

"I see," Jean said somberly and shook her head, "He doesn't want to see me."

"No, he _does_," Hannibal told her, "He wants to see _you_, it's _me_ he doesn't want to see for the rest of the night."

"What?" Jean asked as she sat up, "What're you talking about?"

Hannibal raised a hand and explained, "Before you called tonight, he and I were having a small argument."

"About what? He _never_ argues with you," Jean said.

"Well then it was bound to happen sooner or later, wasn't it?" Hannibal asked, trying to evade the question, "Look, Jean, it's late, we're both tired, this has been a miserable night for everybody, let's just go to sleep and we'll get everything straightened out in the morning."

"Okay," she admitted defeat, "But what about Murdock?"

"He knows how to take care of himself," Hannibal told her, "He's been doing it long enough he ought to."

Jean didn't get it, and she didn't like it, but she knew she wasn't going to get anymore answers out of Hannibal for the night, so she gave in and laid down and after a while, closed her eyes.

And now it was Hannibal's turn to lay awake. The truth of the matter was that with a few exchanged and some heated words, Murdock had stormed out of the house about half an hour ago; around the time Jean was getting cleaned up so it made sense why she hadn't heard it. The three remaining Team members had debated amongst themselves what to do, if they should go after Murdock…but Hannibal decided it would be better to let him cool off for the night without them chasing him. He really didn't understand what had come over his Captain, but in the last few days Murdock hardly seemed like himself anymore, and he got defensive if anybody inquired about it.

He'd sent Face up to check on Jean a little while ago, apparently she hadn't even noticed him peering into the room. He'd come back and reported, "Well I don't think she's going to be feeling any pain tonight, _physically_ anyway, but I get the idea she's waiting for Murdock."

And of course she would, she'd just gotten the stuffing beaten out of her once again, and once again the people responsible had made sure that they hit below the belt; she wasn't simply knocked around, she was assaulted and humiliated, as was the intention. And it showed.

Looking over to the other side of the bed Hannibal could see that Jean was asleep now, for which he was glad. Oh boy what a night, and what a mess. For the most part Jean had no trouble keeping her emotions in check, to make herself unreadable, but tonight was something else altogether. When she'd found out that Murdock had gone, she had taken it _very_ personal, figuring it was because he didn't want to see her, and why wouldn't he? The woman he had married, the woman he loved so much had been assaulted and he acted like he hardly even cared, he hadn't even bothered to see if she was alright before he stormed out of the house. And that was when Hannibal decided to stay with her in Murdock's place tonight, having one person run out on you was bad enough, but there wasn't anything worse than being abandoned by _everybody_ who you knew.

In her sleep, Jean rolled over towards Hannibal's side of the bed and rested against him, giving him the initial shock of the night. Once that feeling passed, he eased into his role of her secondary pillow for the night, and absentmindedly wrapped an arm around her, pulling her even closer to him.

Well, Jean might have everyone else fooled, but she couldn't fool him, he knew very well what she was; very much a woman, and very much aware, and it showed, if you paid close enough attention. The thing of it was she was well versed in the art of disruption and distraction to make sure you _didn't_ pay attention to what she was, only what she did. And it was with that in mind that he thought back to the events of the night. They'd found the stuntmen who had assaulted Jean, four men that they had never seen before, apparently with good reason, because Jean had been the one hired to do work that they considered themselves better qualified for, and they took it out on her. Murdock had been exceptionally furious during the beatdown they gave those men, but afterwards he returned to his almost detached self and all but ignored Jean during the ride back. It didn't make any sense.

Hannibal wasn't aware of falling asleep during the night, all he knew next was that it was morning, the house was quiet and Jean was still asleep beside him. It was still early, the sun wasn't fully up yet and wouldn't be for a while, and Hannibal got an idea. He slipped out of bed and got changed for the day and made his way down the stairs and to the front door, when he was stopped by the others.

"Where're you going, Hannibal?" Face asked.

"Out," was his answer of choice, "And when Jean wakes up, don't tell her where I've gone and _don't_ let her try to follow me."

"Well where're you going?" B.A. wanted to know.

He turned to his men and answered, "I'm going to go find Decker, I need to have a few words with him from one Colonel to another."

* * *

Finding Decker hadn't been hard, if you knew the man at _all_ it wasn't hard to figure out the places he was likely to be in one day. As it was, he'd tracked Decker down at the Federal Building, but before he'd had a chance to talk to the man, an MP walked in to the office and Hannibal pulled a hostage act and 'forced' Decker out the window with him and they made a getaway in one of the MP cars. Hannibal had driven them out to a very secluded place where there were no people around and the surrounding area was nothing but a jagged, rocky terrain, and it was out there that the two men talked.

"Decker, are you _sure_ you couldn't understand what Stockwell was saying when he came to the jail?" Hannibal asked.

"I told you before I couldn't, what's this all about?" Decker wanted to know.

"I don't know," Hannibal grunted, "But I don't like it whatever it is." He looked out at the scenery ahead of them and he told Decker, "You know, I'd hate to think that one of my men have been lying to me this whole time."

Decker turned to him curiously, "Who?"

"Murdock."

Decker's eyes widened momentarily and he replied, "That's news, from what I've heard, Murdock was always supposed to be the most loyal one _on_ your Team."

"Usually he is," Hannibal said, "But now I wonder…Stockwell went to the jail looking for Murdock, he spoke in some crazy language expecting Murdock to understand, he knew if it was Murdock he _would_ understand, how could he know? As far as I can tell, there are only 3 possibilities to this: either Stockwell was only going by what other people in the CIA already knew about Murdock, _or_, Murdock did know Stockwell at some point but he forced himself to block out the memories so he honestly can't remember knowing him. _Or_, he's always known who Stockwell is and he's been lying to me all this time. For his sake _and_ mine I'm hoping it's not the last one. But something's gotten into him lately and I don't know what it is."

He went back to the car and pointed to the car phone and asked Decker, "Does this just ring through to your goon squad or can you get an outside line on it?"

"What for?" Decker asked.

"I'm going to try something," Hannibal picked up the receiver and dialed the house, "Face, has Murdock come back yet?"

"Yeah," he heard the Lieutenant reply, "But he's gone again."

"Where'd he go?" Hannibal asked.

"I don't know, but wherever he went he took Jean with him," Face answered.

"_What_?" Hannibal asked.

"It was weird, Hannibal," Face said, "He came in without a word to anybody, went upstairs, and a few minutes later he came back down with Jean, and they left without a single word to either of us, just stormed out of here and took off, and we haven't seen either of them since."


	6. Chapter 6

Murdock hummed to himself as he walked along with a large Styrofoam cup in each hand of heavily iced cola. He went over to where Jean was seated on a bench with her hands brought up covering her face.

"You can look now," he told her in a semi-annoyed tone.

"Uh-uh," Jean replied behind her hands, "That's what you said before, _then_ the ride started moving again."

"Come on," Murdock said as he sat down beside her, "Open your eyes, here," he handed her one of the cups.

Jean took a drink of her coke and asked, "So, what do you want to do next?"

Her teeth gritted together as they heard the agonizing squealing creaking of the Zipper ride as the entire ride rotated for the umpteenth time since it started that morning.

"You're _never_ going to get me on another one of those," she told him, "Not after we went skydiving out the last one, _no_ way."

Murdock patted her on the back sympathetically and asked, "How 'bout that one?" and pointed to the Spider.

"Hell no," Jean said simply as she shook her head.

"Come on, Jean," Murdock said, "You can't fall out of it."

"I _don't_ care," she replied, "They don't strap you down, they don't have a lock bar against you, there's a big _hole_ right where your feet are, it's a recipe for disaster once that thing starts moving: backwardsforwardsupdownupdownleftright, forget it."

"What about that?" Murdock pointed over to the Tilt-A-Whirl.

"No way," Jean said, "That's just as bad, just on a ground level."

"Boy you don't like _anything_, do you?" Murdock asked.

"I told you before I'm scared of heights," she told him, "And I don't like being knocked around every which way like I'm in a blender on warp drive."

"Alright, alright," Murdock glanced around the amusement park and spotted a parachute ride, "How bout that one? Doesn't look too high up."

Jean just shook her head.

It would've been easy for Murdock to tease her about it, but he could appreciate the effect the rougher rides had had on Jean, the color still hadn't come back into her hands yet from their time on the Trabant Wheel, he'd practically had to pry her hands off the bar when the ride finally stopped, _actually_ stopped instead of just pausing while shifting gears and then going backwards. As it was, so many rides were out of the question that they'd been on the bumper cars about 15 times since they got there when the park first opened up. He looked around again and pointed towards the Scrambler and asked, "How 'bout that?"

Jean took another drink of her coke and nodded, "Sure, in this weather that's the _only_ way to get air conditioning."

* * *

"I still say you're making a mistake," Jean told Murdock as they found a place at the beach to stop and set up shop. After the amusement park, they'd gone back to Jean's house to get a change of appropriate beach attire and decided to soak up the sun while they had the chance.

"You worry too much," Murdock replied as, dressed only in a pair of swimming trunks and a pair of black sunglasses, he tossed town a couple of towels in the sand and straightened them out.

"I'm telling you," Jean said as she walked up behind him in her blue sparkle one piece swimsuit and said as she poked him in the back, "You have no pigmentation in your skin, you're borderline albino, you are going to burn to a lobster crisp out here."

"Ha-ha," he dryly remarked as he sat down on one of the towels, "Where's the lotion?"

"I'll get it, you'll _never_ be able to reach your back," she told him.

Murdock looked out to the ocean as he sat with his knees drawn into his chest, he flinched when he felt the cold lotion on his back but otherwise didn't move as Jean smeared and slapped it on.

"You know, this has been a very…interesting day so far," Jean told him as she pushed her own sunglasses up the bridge of her nose, "First you come in and pin me against the bed, and you say we're going to go out and have us a good time today. And as soon as we get out of the house, you're driving like a maniac, and we spend two hours at the amusement park, and _after_ we go on all the throw-up rides, _then_ we stuff ourselves on hot dogs, cotton candy, nachos, candied apples and coke, and _now_ we come to the beach, and after _that_, you say we're gonna go to a water park and cool off, cuz there ain't any sharks in a water park."

"Shouldn't be anyway," Murdock replied.

"All very nice," Jean noted, "And yet I can't help wondering…"

"Wondering what?" Murdock asked.

The hands stopped rubbing in the sun block and he turned to see Jean staring at him despite the black shades covering her eyes, and she asked, "Why do I get the feeling we're about to be saying goodbye to one another?"

Murdock lowered his sunglasses and looked at her, "That's what you think?"

"What am I supposed to think, Murdock?" Jean asked, "This has all the makings of one last grand hurrah. Especially given the last few days you seem to barely want to stay in the same room with me. And once again I can't help wondering why…" she looked over her sunglasses and added, "Practically since we came home. Is this guy Pedavich supposed to do something else to his victims that I wasn't informed about, something that would've qualified me as damaged goods or something?"

Murdock's previously fun-loving expression had faded away and was replaced with something much more melancholic as he helplessly tried to make sense of what she was saying. "How can you…I don't…that's not what happened."

"Why did you walk out last night?" Jean asked, "Hannibal said you two got in a fight, you _never_ get in a fight with Hannibal, what is going on?"

Murdock put his hands on her arms just between her shoulders and biceps and forced her to look at him as he told her, "It's complicated Jean, I know I've been absent lately but I didn't think you were taking it _this_ hard."

Jean got out a short, strangled, humorless laugh and replied, "I got the crud beat out of me last night, the idiots responsible left me sprawled out on the lot half naked, you won't even come near me, and you storm out of the house last night without so much as an explanation, and you didn't think I'd take it hard?"

"I'm sorry, darling," Murdock shook his head, "I know it's inexcusable but I just had to get out, I had to clear my head. It wasn't meant to be personal."

"Then what's it all about?" she asked.

"Every single time we try going out on a date, it always ends in disaster, I wanted us for once to have _one_ date where nothing went wrong, nobody interrupted us, and I got the idea if it was going to work, we might have to start earlier than we usually do going out at night."

"You didn't clear this day off with Hannibal," Jean said, "I know that much."

Murdock nodded, "You're right, we're in trouble now and we'll still be in trouble when this whole thing's over, so there's no reason to call it off early and go back soon to take our licks. When we _do_ go back, I'll take the fall for what happens today."

Jean looked like it was starting to make sense but she told him, "I still don't understand _why_ you've been avoiding me the last few days."

Murdock put an arm around her back and pulled her against him as he explained, "Darling, you know I love you, don't you?"

She nodded.

"But you gotta understand, this case…it's been a flashback for all of us," he told her, "When you and Hannibal were gone I just kept thinking about what might've been happening to you and…"

"You got scared," she said simply.

Murdock responded, "It drove home the fact that you're in danger just by being with me."

"Don't think I'm not aware of the fact," Jean said as she wrapped her hand around his and squeezed it, "But I'm still here, I haven't survived everything I have with you just to take off now, you ought to know that."

Murdock worked his hand loose from her grip and intertwined his fingers with hers and told her, "I was so sure we wouldn't get there in time…when we found you and you were alright…I just couldn't believe it…and once we got out of there I started to worry that maybe…maybe it wasn't real, maybe the truth was worse than I could imagine…" he tried to smile and laughed nervously, "I know it don't make sense but, I was worried if I got too close…maybe I'd find out it _wasn't_ real, or it'd get worse. And after that, I needed some time to think, and figure everything out…once I got that all sorted through, I decided that we needed to do _this_, before anything else happens."

Jean's smile was not so convincing given her eyes couldn't be seen, but she leaned in to him and hugged him.

"I'm sorry, darling," Murdock told her.

"It's okay," she replied, "I really appreciate this, I'm having a great time."

Murdock returned the hug and when he did, he felt the skin on her back was already warm, "Hmmm, need to do _your_ back now, you're already starting to burn."

Jean was reluctant but she complied, as she felt Murdock kneading the lotion into her skin she asked him, "So what was the fight about last night?"

There was a brief pause and Murdock explained, "It wasn't a fight, just an argument."

"What about?" she asked.

"He thinks I know more about Stockwell than I'm telling."

She looked up at him, "Do you?"

The hands stopped and Murdock replied, "I know his _kind_, CIA members _like_ him…_him_, no. I just resent that Hannibal would think I'd lie to him, I have never lied to him about _anything_ in all the years I've known him, I have no _reason_ to lie to him."

Jean nodded and then told him, "Okay."

He looked to her and almost laughed, "Okay? _You_ believe me just like that?"

"I never had any reason not to," she replied, "Now that that's settled, we'll deal with _that_ tomorrow…today we're supposed to be having fun, right?"

Murdock slowly smiled and said, "Right, and I got something planned for tonight I think you'll like."

* * *

"Quiet," Murdock whispered to Jean as he reached a hand out towards her to cue her, "Quiet, no sudden moves…slowly," the two inched along on the ground in the night, then Murdock waved his arm like a race flag and said, "Go!"

Jean lunged forth on the ground and stretched her arms out and wrapped her hands around the fat toad and listened to its croaking scream as it tried to get away from her. She held it up to show Murdock only to see he'd managed to get his hands wrapped around a fatter one before the rest got away. Jean laughed and told him, "These things are disgusting."

"Better than frogs," Murdock told her, "Just have to be careful you don't grab any poisonous ones. Come on," he nodded his head to the side, "Into the bucket."

They took the toads over to a five gallon bucket and set them down in among 10 other toads they'd caught that night, ranging in different sizes and piled on top of one another.

"You know," Jean said, "When you said you used to take your girlfriends out to hunt for toads at night, I thought you were kidding."

Murdock just shrugged and replied, "Plenty of toads when I was growing up."

Jean rubbed her hands on her jean shorts and told him, "Yeah well, I think I've had enough. I don't like touching 'em." Before Murdock could get a crack out, she told him, "I'm worried I'll hurt 'em."

"Oh they're hardier than you think," he said.

"Still…" she said as she sat down on the ground, "We're not taking them _back_ with us, are we?"

"Nah, I'll turn 'em loose in a minute," Murdock replied as he sat down beside her, "Catching them's all that matters."

Even though it had been hot all day, Jean felt a slight chill in the air tonight, and she wrapped her arms around herself as she said, "This has certainly been an…unusual day." She looked to Murdock and told him, "Thank you."

Murdock grinned and leaned over to put his arm around her and told her, "Well don't get excited, it's not over yet."

She turned to him and asked, "Well what's left?"

He looked sheepish as he said to her, "You remember what I told you before? We're already in trouble with Hannibal for taking off like we did, and we'll be in trouble when we go home."

"I remember," she said.

"Well," he said to her, "I don't see any reason why we should go back tonight, tomorrow will be early enough for Hannibal to throw the book at us."

"You're very sure of yourself, aren't you?" Jean asked with a small smirk.

Murdock chuckled under his breath as he nuzzled against her, "You'll see, my dear."

Jean looked to the side and reached out and caught a tiny baby toad that was hardly any bigger than a marble shooter and told Murdock, "Hey look, I got another one."

"Yeah," he gnashed his teeth, "Runt of the litter."

They got up and Murdock grabbed the bucket and turned it on its side and they watched as the lot of toads went hopping out in all directions and disappeared back into the night.

"Now what?" Jean asked.

Murdock gestured towards the way they came and said, "Follow me."

* * *

A couple hours later, Jean found herself laying in a tangle of sheets on a bed, looking up at the ceiling. Murdock was already asleep over on the other side of the bed, sprawled out a bit but his back was straight flat against the mattress under him. Looking over at him, it was impossible not to notice the small contented smile on his face as he slept. She wondered if she'd look that ridiculous when she stopped fighting and finally gave in and conked out for the night.

Trust Murdock never to do anything halfway. When he'd said that the night wasn't over, he knew well what he was talking about; he'd already had the hotel room reserved, and she couldn't help wondering _who_ he had to talk to for the arrangements of a chilled bottle of wine and two glasses waiting on the table, a bunch of red rose petals leaving a trail from the doorway over to the bed and _on_ the bed, and some very suggestive dim lighting with a few large candles spread all over the room and burning nicely once she got out of the shower and joined him in the bedroom. And she'd also noticed that for some reason there was an overload of daisies and other white flowers in the room as well, you could just reach on over to the side of the bed and pull out a whole bouquet from the fine mess of them all.

They'd drunk the bottle of wine in record time and fell into bed after that, and anything else from that time to this was pretty much a blur. She didn't even know what time it was, but it felt that she'd been staring at the ceiling for an eternity; her eyes burned with exhaustion but she wasn't willing to close them and let this night fade away from her just yet. Everything that happened today going off without a hitch like it had, had meant so much to Murdock and now she understood why. She reached her left hand over to his side of the bed and wrapped her fingers around his hand and squeezed tight.

The candles had long since been extinguished, but before they'd settled in for the night, Murdock had opted to keep the lights on for the night. He'd insisted on it saying if he woke up in the night, he'd be able to see her and know the whole day hadn't just been a dream. Jean had already been slipping in and out of consciousness at the time, but she managed a tired smile and told him, "You really _are_ crazy, you know that?"

Murdock returned an equally exhausted and equally goofy smile and replied, "Of _course_ I know it…how'd _you_ know it?"

She pressed her head against his and answered, "Because I know _you_."

Jean held onto Murdock's hand and thought back to the previous events of the night as she closed her eyes and let them stay shut for several seconds, before opening them again and pulling the covers up. But instead of settling down on her own side of the bed, she found herself lunging over towards Murdock's side, she grabbed him by the arm and placed her head against his chest so she could hear his heart beating.

_"Just put your ear over the old ticker here, that's what I used to do with Billy all the time when he was a puppy and had nightmares, and it always worked like a charm."_

That's what Murdock had told her before, when they'd first met up again when she moved out there. That seemed like a lifetime ago. Even longer back though was the first time they'd actually done it. She remembered…even after all this time and all she'd been through, she remembered. She would always remember, that night, that dream, the A-Team caught, facing execution, Hannibal disrupting the hanging to announce they were already dead, black pills, cyanide perhaps. At the time, Murdock didn't have any idea what was wrong, he just knew that _something_ was, and he'd wasted no time pacifying her so they'd sleep for the rest of the night. Would it work again?

Jean pressed her ear against the thin cotton of Murdock's pajama shirt and listened to the steady _thump-thump-thump_, how often did the heart beat? About 35 million times a year if she remembered right, let's see, he was 40 years old _now_, so…she pressed her ear closer to his chest and thought to herself: _beat 1 billion more times, 2 billion, 3 billion, 5 billion, don't ever stop._

How did you really know when you were in love with somebody? Well, if you were willing to die for them, or with them, that seemed like a good place to start, and she knew if anything _would_ ever happen to Murdock, she'd already decided, either consciously or subconsciously, that she would fall down and die right alongside him. Tomorrow was the day they got back to reality and dealt with consequences and all the 'what ifs' that they had put off today. Murdock was right of course, staying with him made her even more of a target than she'd already been, and when…_if_ they ever got married, she'd have a nice big _bold_ bulls eye on her head, there was no getting around that fact. She didn't care. She'd already gone through so much because of her involvement with him and the rest of the Team, it wouldn't serve a purpose to pull out now and turn tail. The more Jean thought about it, if they were ever going to have any peace together, a few things were going to have to be taken care of as soon as possible, and as she drifted off to sleep with the lullaby of Murdock's reassuring beating heart, she was already plotting how to deal with those matters, one way, or another.

* * *

The next morning the sunlight was already starting to pour through the windows into the hotel room. Jean was already awake and in the process of getting up, she turned on her side and gave Murdock a small shove and told him, "Come on, Murdock, it's morning."

"Hmmmm," Murdock murmured into the pillow as he turned over and buried his head under it.

"Come on, Murdock, it's time to get up," she said.

"Don't want to," he replied.

"I _know_ you don't _want_ to, but we've got to," she told him.

"Who said?" Murdock asked as he pulled his head out from under the pillow.

Jean sat on her knees on her side of the bed and she told him, "You know we have to go back today."

"No we don't," Murdock shook his head, "They don't know where we are, they can't find us, we could just stay right here."

"You don't mean that," Jean said.

"Maybe I do," Murdock said as he flopped on his back and looked up at her, "It wouldn't take much for us to get access to a plane and fly on out of here and disappear off to someplace where _nobody_ would find us, where nobody would even know to start looking."

Jean balled her hands up and placed them at her sides as she looked down at him with an otherwise unreadable face and she replied, "Running away isn't the answer to anything, and you know it."

"We could try," Murdock insisted.

She shook her head slightly, "No, Murdock."

Murdock sprung up without warning, grabbed Jean and pinned her against the bed and told her, "We could disappear right now and run off somewhere and get married, the guys would never know, and we could cash in our three week leave for our honeymoon and be gone…and maybe just don't come back."

"That's not fair to the others," Jean told him, "We promised Hannibal when we got married it'd be when they were all there to witness it."

"Since when do you care about what we promised?" he asked her half teasingly.

"Come on, Murdock," she said dismissively, "Get off me."

Murdock seemed to consider it for a second before replying, "Nope," and put his full weight against her, pinning her against the bed even more.

Jean got out an excited half laugh/half yelp as they sank deeper against the mattress and his grip on her didn't loosen up any.

"Okay," she said, gesturing helplessly, "You got me, now what're you going to do with me?"

Murdock got a very mischievous look on his face as he looked down at her, she didn't miss the way his eyebrows raised ever so slightly or the teeniest tiniest show of teeth as he smiled at her devilishly.

"Come on, Murdock," Jean gestured, "Up, _up_."

Murdock raised his weight off of her and slid down on the bed alongside her. "Saint, you ever see the old 'Captain Midnight' programs?"

"Sure," Jean picked at her nails, "About a hundred years ago, I saw the old serials in a theater."

"Me too," he replied, "It's funny, I never thought about it until now."

Jean glanced over at him and asked, "What?"

"Remember Joyce, his girlfriend?" Murdock asked, "Captain Midnight always had her drive during their pursuits and getaways."

Jean nodded and said after a few seconds' remembrance, " 'Joyce get in the car and drive', sure, that alone gave her a bigger part than most women played in the serials."

Murdock had a distant look in his eyes as he told her, "Seems like a lifetime ago…one time when Amy was helping us and she was with me, I made reference to us being Sky King and Penny…it just hit me, I'm Captain Midnight, and you're Joyce Edwards."

"I get it," she said as she looked to him, "He flies, she drives, and they're both _very_ good at it."

Murdock suddenly looked very melancholic as he confessed, "But I don't remember how it ended."

"Neither do I," Jean told him, "But the hero _always_ gets the girl, that's a given."

There was a silence between them for a minute before Murdock folded his arms and said with a huff, "I guess we've put off the bad news long enough."

Jean nodded.

"Now we go back and take what Hannibal throws at us," Murdock said.

Jean shook her head, "No we won't."

Murdock looked to her and asked, "What do you mean?"

Now it was Jean's turn to grin like the Cheshire cat and she told him, "Yesterday when you got stuck in your inner tube and took 15 minutes to get out of it, I found a phone and called Hannibal and told him what was going on, so for the most part we'll be off the hook."

Murdock eyed her curiously and asked, "You told him the truth?"

"Well…" she shrugged, "Enough of the truth that he needs to know. I told him that you and I had taken a day off before anything else happened and he could deal with us when we came back, but I told him that it was _my_ idea."

Murdock did a double take and asked, "Now _why_ would you do that?"

"Because I happen to like you," Jean said, "And I happen to know Hannibal isn't going to run _me_ through his obstacle course as punishment, especially after what happened last time."

"How'd he take it?" Murdock asked.

Jean smiled and bobbed her head from side to side and told him, "He sounded amused."

Murdock turned and looked to the other side of the room and he said, "Whenever Hannibal sounds amused, it's never good. I wonder what he's got in mind?"

* * *

"Face has been in and out of the hospital a dozen times since Stockwell was admitted, there's been _no_ change, so we're going to have to turn our attention to Fulbright," Hannibal said.

"Tommy Trang already said there's nothing there," Murdock reminded the Colonel.

"Then we're just going to have to take Mohammad to the mountain," Hannibal told him.

"Huh?" Face asked.

"He means we gotta get our _hands_ on Fulbright and bring him to _us_," B.A. told the Lieutenant.

"Ah geez, Hannibal, you think that's a good idea?" Face asked, "Do you have any idea how many MPs this guy surrounds himself with at all times?"

"That's never stopped us before," Hannibal responded, "Not with Lynch, not with Decker."

"Decker only takes his man Friday to assist him at the shooting range," Jean threw in, "Fulbright's got 2 dozen yes men MPs to follow him around a golf course at some bourgeoisie country club."

"The Beverly Bay Country Club?" Murdock asked.

"That's the one," Face said dryly, "You know how long I've been killing myself trying to get accepted in that place? And a guy like Fulbright is golfing there every single week, where's the justice? I can't think of anybody who belongs there _less_."

"Well if you want, Face, you could come with me," Murdock said.

"Yeah right, how would _you_ get in the club? As a waiter?" Face asked.

"No, Dr. Richter takes me as a guest," Murdock answered.

"You WHAT?!" Face's eyes about shot out of his head.

Jean pressed both her hands over her mouth and nose to muffle the sound of the snorting laugh that escaped her.

"But it's no good, he'd recognize us in a heartbeat," Murdock reminded Hannibal.

Jean raised her hand like an overeager student. Hannibal shot her down with a mere shake of his head.

"Come on, Hannibal, he doesn't know _me_. Besides, you heard Tommy, he doesn't pay attention to who the MPs are, he just notices the suits and that they all stay in line. You know I could do it."

"It's too risky," Hannibal said, "We'll have to take another approach."

"Even if you could," Jean said, "You think he's going to just come out and admit that he's working with Stockwell to catch you?"

Hannibal shrugged, "You never know, some dirt clods are just _dying_ for somebody to confess to."

"_That_ could be arranged," Jean murmured.

"Has Tommy said if Fulbright goes _anywhere_ without a parade of annoying green men?" Hannibal asked.

"I don't think that man even goes to the _bathroom_ by himself, Colonel," Murdock commented.

"Now _there's_ a guy with issues," Jean said.

"Okay," Hannibal raised a hand to get their attention, "So if we can't get him _alone_, we're just going to have to find a good opportunity and strike."

"How?" Face wanted to know.

"Yeah Hannibal," B.A. agreed, "We can't exactly just walk right up to the sucker, he _knows_ us."

"And he'd spot us before we got within 20 feet of him," Face added.

Hannibal seemed to be considering it and he said indecisively, "Maybe…may-be…but I'll just bet he's not much for movies."

"Oh no," Face groaned and was shaking his head, "Now you're _not_ going to go with one of your lizard costumes are you?"

"Or that pathetic blackface like you did in Vegas," B.A. added.

"Or another hag?" Jean asked.

They could see the wheels turning in Hannibal's head and the grin that showed on his face didn't do much to set any of them at ease.

"I get a feeling it's worse than anything we could think of," Jean said.

* * *

"Hannibal, I think this reaches an all time worst, even from you," Face told Hannibal the next day.

"Oh come on, Face, be positive," Hannibal responded.

"Okay, I'm _positive_ this is an all time worst, even for you," Face replied.

Hannibal just chuckled, "Come on Face, this isn't anything we haven't done before."

"Sure, but not all at the same time," Murdock said as he followed behind the other two.

Hannibal just chuckled to himself as the three of them reached the curb. He'd come up with the brilliant idea that they could get within perfectly close range of Fulbright if he didn't see them coming, and the only way to do that in plain sight was for him not to recognize them. As it was, Hannibal was dressed up like an old lady in a conservative blue dress, tan-orange stockings, white ladies' dress shoes, a short gray and white curly wig and a small black hat with a veil. Face was back in his usual priest getup, with a set of large frame glasses and his hair done differently so he wasn't too obviously familiar. And Murdock brought up the rear in what appeared to be a cub scout leader uniform. Their own mothers wouldn't recognize them…well, Hannibal's might, he was after all wearing _her_ dress, but that was beside the point. Fulbright was sure to miss them like this.

As usual, B.A. just could _not_ be talked into donning a disguise even if it meant making their job the tiniest bit easier. Just as well, Hannibal supposed, B.A. was working at the daycare center today and would be there for a few hours. They were going to attempt observing Fulbright from a safe distance and once they figured out a plan of attack they were going to take it once they knew B.A. would be ready to come in as backup.

And as for Jean? Wait a minute…Hannibal stopped and turned to the others and asked, "Where _is_ Jean?"

Murdock lowered the glasses he was wearing as part of his disguise and answered, "I think she said she was going to stick close to the daycare center incase there was any trouble."

Face snorted, "Her being around those kids is what's trouble," he turned to Hannibal and said, "Remember the time we went to help out? She had the kids playing cowboys and Indians and they were trying to scalp me!"

"Oh they were only playing, Face," Hannibal told him.

Face laughed humorlessly and replied, "You obviously don't know Jean very well."

As soon as the last syllable was out of Face's mouth, the three men heard a deafening explosion behind them and they turned to see a cloud of black smoke coming from the vicinity of the daycare center which was just a couple blocks away from them.

"You see? What did I tell you!?" Face asked.

"Come on!" Hannibal told them, "We better check this out."

They doubled back the way they'd come and found, much to their horror, that the daycare center was the source of the explosion, the windows were busted, smoke was pouring out of all of them, and kids were running out in packs in a blind panic. In the midst of all the chaos, Hannibal spotted B.A. and went over to him and asked, "What the hell happened, B.A.?"

The Sergeant was doubled over choking on smoke; once he'd gotten his lungs cleared enough to talk he told Hannibal, "I don't know, I think somebody set off a bomb."

"Did everybody get out okay?" Face asked as he looked around to see if he could notice anyone missing.

"Yeah," B.A. choked, "I think so, I made sure all the kids got out first."

Murdock looked around and asked, "Where's Jean?"

They got an answer when they heard a ruckus coming from somewhere nearby. Getting out of the smokescreen, they saw Jean chasing after a man out into the street, she grabbed him and threw him up against a parked car and was in the process of knocking his head against the driver side window when he knocked her back and got loose, and ran right into the path of Hannibal's purse, which knocked the man cold and he fell against the asphalt.

Doing his best impression of an old lady, Hannibal commented as he opened up his purse and took out a miniature cast iron skillet, "Always did like bringing a little bit of my kitchen with me wherever I go." He dropped it back in and asked Jean as she came over to them, "You okay, Jean?"

"_I'm_ fine," she answered dismissively, "I saw this guy taking off right after the explosion, figure he had a large part to do with it."

"Unfortunately we don't have time to find out," Hannibal said, "The cops are gonna be here soon and we have to make sure the kids are all alright _and_ accounted for."

"Yeah well we might have bigger problems than that," Face chimed in, "I see some cars heading this way and they look like MP standard."

"Terrific," Hannibal said, "This is no time for a standoff with Decker, we gotta get out of here and take the kids with us."

"Right and go where?" Jean asked.

"Come on," Hannibal nodded his head to the side, "Follow my lead."

* * *

You never saw anybody move as fast as the A-Team and the 30-some children ages between 8 and 12; by the time the first cars had shown up at the scene, they'd already cut across two side streets and were making good time getting away from the excitement. On the way they'd taken a head count and deducted that all the kids were present and accounted for and aside from being shaken up, none of them seemed to have gotten hurt in the explosion.

"I just don't get it," Face said, "Why would _anybody_ bomb a daycare center?"

"Same reason the Weathermen bombed police stations in the 70s," Jean said, "To get attention and try and get whatever point across that their agenda has. But it's different because nobody really cares if you bomb a police station because they have a lot of natural born enemies on both sides of the law, but _everybody's_ going to sit up and take notice of people throwing time bombs at kids."

"I tell you Hannibal, if I coulda got my hands on that sucker," B.A. was fuming.

"I know B.A.," Hannibal replied and looked up ahead, "But it doesn't look like we have time to worry about _that_ either. We got company."

They looked up the street and saw a few more MP cars that were at a standstill at the intersection, and they weren't too surprised to see Fulbright talking to another man in uniform.

"Huh, what're the odds of that?" Face asked, "Is anybody here named _Murphy_ by any chance?"

"Alright, new plan," Hannibal said, since he wasn't willing to take any chances with the kids around, "Everybody turn around and head back the way you came, and _slowly_, don't draw any attention to yourself."

"Then what?" Murdock asked.

"We'll figure that out when we come to that bridge," Hannibal answered.

Everybody groaned at his answer, but they did as they were told. They turned around and scurried back a block down, and Hannibal told everybody to follow him as he cut across to a yard in the middle of the block and headed up to the front porch.

* * *

The occupants of the house were a married couple well past middle age and by now both were starting to make the transition from gray to white haired. They sat opposite each other in matching blue recliners in their living room, the wife focused on her knitting, and her husband sitting back and reading the newspaper. The man heard the front door swing open, but that wasn't unusual, the latch had been broken for several weeks now. He didn't give it any mind until he started to see things through the corner of his eye. Putting his newspaper down he looked over to the dining room and saw a pack of kids cross through from the dining room to the kitchen, and in between them came Jean, Murdock, Face, B.A. and Hannibal.

"Uh dear," the husband said, "Did you invite 3 dozen kids, 1 old lady, 1 wrestler, 1 priest and 1 cub scout leader over for a visit?"

His wife lowered her knitting and responded, sounding slightly confused, "Noooooo…"

"No neither did I," the man said as he tossed his paper down and glared at the people tramping through his dining room, "So what's the big idea, wise guys?"

"Oh don't pay us any mind," Hannibal said in his regular voice, "We're just passing through." He raised his arm and called to the others, "Forward march!"

The two homeowners sat in silence and watched as the rest of the parade cleared through their dining room and disappeared, and when all was quiet again, the husband turned to his wife and said in a slow-burn tone, "I said it before, and I'll say it again…I'm not the one who wanted to move to California."


End file.
